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

Acadia 6/10
RivkaT@aol.com
III. Whose Woods These Are...

Acadia is God's country. Not the mild God of the New Testament, but fierce
Yahweh whose covenant was made with slaves and desert wanderers. Yahweh, who
promised to save Sodom if five righteous men might be found there, but was
not disappointed in his intentions.

Only Adonai, I Am Who I Am, could have carved these mountains and the fjord
out of the coast with His mighty hands. He broke the earth and divided it,
weighing one part down while lifting the other up. He blew and the rocks
formed a wall against the ocean, smoothed and shaped by His breath. He turned
His gaze on the soil and flowers bloomed; animals formed from dust and began
their assigned duties in the life cycle He ordained. He crowned the mountains
with bare rock, to signify the destructive power He had used to make the land
below so fertile and to show that He stands alone at the top of all creation.

Yahweh did all this and then gave the land over to sons of Adam and
daughters of Eve. From the mountaintops, the visitors can see how much He
loved his creations, to allow them this beauty, green and blue and grey, life
in every crevice and branch.

Many men (and a few women) have since claimed stewardship of Acadia. So it
is written and so it shall be, until He again searches for the righteous few.

Until then, Acadia waits.

* * *

The body lay where it had been found, near the top of one of the hiking
trails. The rangers had long ago run out of crime scene tape, so they'd
simply stationed people below and above on the trail, just out of sight of
the body. Scully thought about telling them to call Bangor for some tape, so
that they wouldn't run out of rangers, but considered that her advice would
not inspire confidence in the crime-solving skills of the FBI and kept her
mouth shut.

They'd driven to the top of the mountain and hiked about a quarter of a mile
down. Scully had kept pace with Mulder fairly well when they were above the
treeline, among the variegated brown rocks, but when they hit evergreens she
went more slowly and he pounded ahead of her.

When she passed the ranger guarding the top of the trail, she saw Mulder
examining the trees, reaching up to touch branches. He ran a finger over the
grey lichen choking one evergreen, and shuddered.

She moved closer and her attention was drawn away from her partner, toward
the figure on the ground.

If the woman had been upright, Scully would have said that she'd been
crucified. But she'd been pinned to the ground.

She had been a woman in her early thirties. Her face had the blankness of
the newly dead--Scully could see the face clearly, since the victim's body
had been positioned with her head pointing down the trail. Blood had swirled
around her face and puddled into a depression in the rock a few feet beyond
her body; her hair was plastered to the ground with dried blood, and only the
hair closest to her temples revealed that the woman had been a brunette.

Scully put on her gloves and knelt to examine the body in situ. She crouched
just outside the channels cut by the rivulets of blood in the light layer of
dirt that covered the rocks.

The preliminary inspection indicated that the woman had probably died of
blood loss and shock. She didn't recognize the metal squares that had been
driven into the victim's wrists and ankles, hammered through flesh into the
rock beneath.

Scully bent to get a closer look and silently commended herself for skipping
the trenchcoat; it would have gotten soaked in blood-damp dirt, and probably
destroyed any trace evidence.

"We're going to need pliers or something to remove these metal disks from
the rock, so that we can move the body," she told the ranger who'd followed
her down, probably against orders but as driven by morbid curiosity as anyone
else. He was standing a discreet distance away from the corpse, looking at it
only in his peripheral vision as if that would somehow make the victim less
dead, the horror less intense. She thought--but wasn't certain--that he was
the same ranger who'd come to Thunder Hole with them on the first day.

"Yes ma'am," he responded, and moved off to carry out her instruction.

Scully tapped the protruding edge of the metal that was sticking out of the
victim's right wrist with a finger. The edge was fairly dull, though not wide
enough to take fingerprints. Underneath the blood spatter, she could see
faded blue paint. What did that remind her of?

She raised her head and looked around for her partner. Mulder was circling
the clearing, looking at all of the trail markers and conversing with the
ranger who'd been first on the scene, summoned by a near-hysterical pair of
hikers. All the hikers had wanted was an early-morning hike, free from
distractions. They'd gotten a nightmare instead. A twinge of sympathy for
them flared, then subsided. She and Mulder would have to interview the
hikers, of course, but first she wanted to get the scene fixed in her head.

Scully fumbled for her voice-activated recorder and began describing the
setting.

When she'd circled halfway around the victim, some Mulder-sense told her
that her partner was doing something significant, and she turned from the
corpse to see him point at a tree. The ranger nodded, and walked over to the
tree to pull at a blue metal square. It was a trail marker, Scully realized,
embedded in the bark by one corner so that most of it stuck out, to guide
hikers down the park-serviced path.

She looked again at the body.

Trail markers, hammered into flesh instead of wood.

How appropriate.

The woman had probably been conscious through most of it, able to watch as
her killer inexorably went about the business of her death. With her feet
elevated above her head, she would not have lost consciousness as quickly as
if she'd been pointed the other way. She could have felt her heart turn into
her worst enemy, as it pumped ounce after ounce of blood to her limbs, never
to return. Near the very end, she would have slipped into unawareness as
shock granted her a mercy her killer would have denied her.

The arms had been first, Scully thought, judging from the blood splatter on
the metal and the rock at the victim's sides. The near-black lines indicated
a velocity consistent with initial, fast-pumping wounds, whereas by the time
the killer had reached the victim's legs, she'd lost enough blood that the
spatter was rounder, more sluggish.

Scully took the camera out of the large pocket in her pullover and took
several pictures of each of the spatters. She could have an expert look at
them if Mulder thought the order of insertion was relevant; blood wasn't her
area of expertise, and if the victim had been elevated in this position for a
period of time before the killing, maybe the legs could have been first. If
Scully had been doing the killing, she surely would have gotten the legs
secured first. Especially with a woman, the legs were by far the most
powerful limbs, and quite dangerous to a person standing above a downed
victim.

It was a measure of the great variety of horror that Scully had seen that
her other predominant thought about the crime itself was: Why not at the top
of the trail? She heard the murmur of Mulder's voice a few yards away, and
rose to give him assistance if he needed it.

"Why didn't he do it at the top of the trail?" Langbein, who at least had
the integrity to show up and see what his inaction was doing to people, was
asking Mulder as she joined them. "I mean, your profile said--"

"Because the top of the trail is above the treeline," Mulder said
impatiently, squinting into the rising sun as he looked up the hill. "See,
just above us there are no more trees, it's all rocks. All of the trail
markers there are just piles of rocks, and sometimes streaks of paint on the
trail itself. The paint's bad, but it's hard to kill someone by painting her
to death, so he chose the treeline, where the metal trail markers begin."

Scully followed Mulder's gaze, and sure enough, about ten feet above them
was the last tree.

Mulder's words made her look more carefully at the landscape. Sand-colored
rock, marked in places with the black of dead moss and the varied greens of
living moss, was visible, first in great flat expanses and then farther above
in increasingly varied and interesting formations shaped by centuries of
wind. Scully could see the trail, twisting and turning above them, marked by
the stone cairns Mulder had mentioned. In places, they were just four or five
large stones piled on an even larger stone, but she could see a few that had
to be at least two feet high, elaborately arranged.

"The stone markers are okay with him," Mulder said, as if he were following
her thoughts. "Not great, but not offensive. The paint marks are offensive,
but he probably wouldn't have killed anyone if that was all. It's the poor
trees that put him over the edge. The bleeding trees..."

Scully looked down the hill, mirroring Mulder's stance. The harsh morning
light made every leaf and twig stand out distinctly. She saw a clump of what
should have been pine needles fused into a lump, like a deformed, fingerless
hand. Young oak leaves sagged under the weight of dirty brown warts--more
galls, she supposed. There were healthy trees, too--more healthy than sick,
if she had to count. But the healthy ones were mere background.

There seemed to be no end to the variety of trees: pine, spruce, cedar,
birch, oak, and many others. Lichen grew on the rocks, spotting them green as
if a bucket of paint had been spattered over the mountain. There was black
among the green; Scully thought and realized that it must be the mineral
deposits from deceased lichen. If she tested the black stains, she knew,
their content would reflect the various pollutants in the air. Ego in Acadia
est.

The sun came slowly up through the sky. Its light seeped through the young
pines growing around the trail, and the trees looked as if they were on fire
from within, green fire. Where the needles converged on the branches, they
were dark green, but they turned translucent as they spread out and received
the light, so they glowed. Even their gentle motion as the wind swept down
the mountain from above the treeline was reminiscent of a flickering fire.

It might have been beautiful, if she hadn't seen all the imperfections up
close. <That's perfect,> she realized. <I can't see the forest for the
trees.>

"Let's get the victim out of here," Scully said. Her voice carried through
the clearing, and several of the rangers turned in her direction.

Mulder looked over at her. "Are you worried that leaving her here desecrates
this place?"

"I leave that fear to the killer. Leaving her here is disrespectful to her."
She looked at Langbein, who was hovering in between the two agents. "We're
going to need pliers to get the metal out of the rock. Can you get a pair?"

The man gulped and nodded, and Scully returned to the body, trying to get as
many pictures as possible before moving the victim.

She heard Mulder walk down the hill behind her. "Why is he killing so many,
so quickly?" she asked him, hoping to trigger a lecture that would make this
gruesome task a little easier to do on autopilot.

"I suspect that he's been working up to this for a while, maybe at other
parks, certainly more slowly. He's deteriorating and accelerating as his
delusion gets more complex. He may think that he's invincible, and that the
time for humans to dominate the earth is ending, so he's both free to kill
more openly and commanded to do so. I'd like to look at all the deaths in the
national parks over the past few years, but I don't know if he'll give us the
time to do so."

"We could ask someone in DC to gather the records, at least," she suggested.
Mulder didn't respond. "This isn't a conspiracy case." More silence. "Is it?"
She snapped a picture of the blood trails under the victim's head.

That brought a chortle. "Not at the moment, Scully, unless you can think of
a reason to kill people in national parks in order to further an agenda of
influencing world events."

"If it's not a conspiracy case, there's no reason not to let someone at the
Bureau help us out with this." It was time for a new roll. She stepped back
and reloaded.

"I don't think we're supposed to get help on this one."

Scully put the camera down and turned to look at him. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that the clock is ticking, and I think we're supposed to flail
around here, eventually catch this guy, and go back with another case solved
and another week or two gone." Mulder spun away from her, kicking fallen
leaves away and grabbing onto the trunk of a tree. If he did not hang on with
all his might, she thought, he'd run heedlessly down the mountain until he
fell.

She nodded, finally understanding what he meant. They were supposed to bring
the killer in, but only at the cost of a few more cubic millimeters of tumor.
She didn't know if she believed Mulder's conspiracy theory in its entirety,
but she did understand that the X Files had lost a substantial amount of
credibility in the Bureau over the last year's antics--her time in jail,
Mulder's little detour with the pedophile, and let's not forget the most
recent *hole in the head*--all that could isolate an already renegade pair of
agents, even if they'd also saved the nation from another Oklahoma City.

"If we're on our own in this, I'd better finish the photos," she said, more
to reassure herself than because anyone was listening, and turned back to the
less complicated corpse.

* * *

Half an hour later, Langbein returned, toolbox in hand. He looked excited.

"Well, we've got someone who identified the very first body," the ranger
said. "Only problem is, she's deaf. She can speak, but not real well. We need
to call for an interpreter. We have one during the summer season, but..." He
shrugged.

Mulder's head came up. He really didn't want to look at this scene any more,
and he'd just been given a way out.

"I can sign," he told the world at large.

Scully stood up, abandoning the search for fibers or other clues around the
site. The work was tiring her out, Mulder could tell; the sun was not yet
overhead and she was ready for a break. She wouldn't admit it, but she was
moving more slowly than usual, taking extra time recording the appropriate
information on all the evidence bags. "I didn't know that," she said. "When
did you learn?"

He shrugged. "Martha's Vineyard was settled by a group of people with a very
high incidence of deafness, and for a while everyone on the island could
sign. When I was growing up, that universal knowledge was dying out, but a
woman who lived near us taught me Martha's Vineyard Sign. It was one of the
dialects that merged to form ASL when the first American college for the Deaf
opened. She had to borrow a bunch of ASL vocabulary, but I'm told my accent
is still very much Martha's Vineyard. I guess it's a little like having
someone talk to you in Shakespearean English. I can talk to the witness,
anyway."

"Well, come on, then," Langbein said impatiently. Scully took the toolbox
from his unresisting fingers. Mulder glanced at her, and she nodded, giving
him permission to go.

Mulder and Langbein drove down the mountain to the park ranger station.
Langbein pulled into his reserved space, right by the back door to the tiny
building, and they went in.

Johanna Hathaway had fiery red hair, almost the same shade as Scully's,
except for a two-inch strip from the center of her forehead all the way down
the back that was pure white. It was quite striking; each color was well
within the range of human variation on its own, but together they gave her
the look of an exotic creature. She had a pleasant enough face, and light
brown eyes, but the hair was the most memorable thing about her.

She was scribbling angrily on a pad when Mulder approached her. She looked
up when his shadow fell across the paper, obviously prepared to put up with
another clumsy attempt at communication.

"I'm with the FBI," he signed, and her face brightened as the irritation
left it. "Can I ask you a few questions?" His mind translated the questions
into English as he went along; his memory was accurate for words, less so for
gestures, and the internal translation allowed him to remember more details.
He wasn't exactly sure why, but probably Scully could explain that it all had
to do with the hippocampus, or something.

"What do you want to know?"

"I haven't talked to the others. Why don't you tell me about your missing
friend?"

"His name is Pierce Reddy."

Mulder almost guffawed--he was pretty sure he'd seen a movie with a star
who'd used that name. But he kept his face straight, and Johanna continued.

"I don't really know him that well. He's a friend of two friends of mine,
from Gallaudet. Janet and Chris introduced me to him, they thought we'd like
each other, but it just didn't work out, so Pierce decided to go camp on his
own, to do more hiking than the rest of us wanted to do. We were supposed to
meet yesterday, but he didn't show up at the cabin."

"Why did you wait until today to ask around?"

Her upper lip curled and she tossed her striped hair back dismissively.
"Because we didn't want to be patronized by hearing people who think we're
dumb or that Pierce must have gotten into trouble because he's Deaf."

Mulder nodded. His situation was different, but he understood the desire to
avoid scrutiny.

"Where are Janet and Chris?"

"They had to get back for exams. I just had papers, so I stayed to look for
Pierce."

"What did Pierce look like?" Damn, that telling mistake in tense was a
problem. Johanna didn't react, probably just assuming that his wording
reflected insufficient knowledge of the language rather than a significant
clue.

"Brown eyes, brown hair, shorter than you." As she described the young man,
Johanna's eyes swept up and down Mulder's body, comparing him with her
erstwhile date and finding Mulder more to her taste.

"Did you meet anyone unusual when you were out hiking?"

She shrugged.

"I'm sorry to tell you this, but Pierce may have run into trouble. I need
you to take a look at some pictures of a body, to see if you can identify
him."

The woman's face tightened in surprise and distress.

"Was there an accident?" she signed.

Mulder shook his head. "Not an accident. A murder. That's why I need to know
if you met anyone unusual on the trail."

He turned to the ranger who'd been trying to appease Johanna before Mulder
arrived, and asked for the photos of the victim.

"Does she think she knows him?" Langbein asked.

"I don't know yet, but I think so."

Langbein rummaged in his desk for the photographs. Mulder turned back to
Johanna, whose face was twisted with concentration.

"There was one strange man," she signed, "all alone on the trail. He hadn't
shaved in a while. He was angry at us for dropping some candy wrappers on the
trail, I think. I can lipread some, but he wouldn't look at my face. He was
staring at my breasts, so I just said that I couldn't understand and we
hurried on by. It was really awful. He followed us for about fifteen minutes,
saying something, and finally I just shouted at him that we were Deaf. He
looked horrified, not as embarrassed as people usually are, but upset, and
then he turned and went the other way. Is he the killer you're looking for?"

"We don't know yet. What did he look like?"

A helpless look. Like many people, Johanna tried not to look too hard at
someone who was ranting at her in an incomprehensible way. "He had a beard.
Dark hair, I think."

Mulder sighed in resignation. Langbein handed him the photos, and he flipped
through, tilting the pile away from Johanna's field of vision until he found
a shot of the victim's face, as calm as if he were simply asleep. He held the
picture out to her, and she took it, staring at it with an odd fascination.

After some time, she put it down on the counter, next to her abandoned pad,
and signed, "That's him. He's really dead?"

Mulder nodded.

"Someone killed him?"

He nodded again.

Johanna leaned against the counter, awestruck. She was young enough, and
distant enough from any real friendship with the victim, to be excited by the
thought of Murder in a National Park, though she seemed smart enough to try
and conceal the part of her that enjoyed the excitement.

Mulder wished that he'd had more experience with conveying emotion in sign
language--he was sure that there was some way to sign gently, but he didn't
know what it was. "I think you should call Janet and Chris and see if they
know how to contact his family."

The young woman nodded, eyes distant, planning how to explain this sudden
tragedy.

"Can I go?" she asked. "Do I have to look at him?"

"You can go, if you leave us a way to contact you," Mulder replied, and she
scribbled an address onto a piece of paper. He gave her a card, in case she
remembered anything else, and she mechanically collected her pad and pen, put
them in her purse, and headed out the door, her path almost steady.

After the door slammed, a sudden thought struck Mulder, and he followed her
out into the gravel-covered parking lot.

Mulder ran after her, and put a hand on her shoulder to get her attention.

She spun around, looking none too pleased at first, but her expression
softened when she recognized him.

"I just thought of something else," he signed. "You and Pierce, it didn't
work out between you--was he a native ASL speaker?"

She looked surprised. "How did you know he wasn't?" she asked. "He worked
hard at it, but his parents sent him to a hearing school until he was
fifteen. They kept thinking he'd start to do better. They even tried to get
him cochlear implants, but they didn't work. They started too late. It was a
crime, what they did. They made it so that he couldn't communicate fully with
his own people."

"The rest of you were native speakers?"

"I'm Deaf of Deaf," she signed proudly, "and so is Chris; Janet was
diagnosed as a baby, and she grew up with ASL."

"Was Pierce able to talk to him?"

She shrugged. "He said the guy was mad. I could tell that."

Mulder thanked her and hurried back to into the building.

Langbein was flipping through the photos, as if the record of the killer's
work was easier to look at than the real thing--or maybe, to someone who did
not work with death as a rule, the photos seemed more realistic.

"I think you should close the park until we catch this man. He's escalating
fast, and I don't think anyone's safe right now. In the off-season, too many
people are isolated; if it were summer, I wouldn't be as worried, because it
would be hard for him to single someone out. But not now."

"One man can't shut down an entire park!" Langbein's already ruddy face
reddened further; Mulder could see a vein near his nose pulse, and his large
pores looked even worse as the man became agitated. "Look, Agent Mulder, the
last time Acadia closed was during the budget furlough, and what closing
means is that the non-essential rangers go home. Six of my seventy-five
employees are law enforcement. Here, that means giving tickets and telling
people not to litter. Once in a while we confiscate beer and have a little
party in the afternoon. We don't keep people out. We *can't*. Aside from the
main access road, there are three or four roads near town that people use
when they don't want to pay the car access fee. And unless we build a really
big fence, there's nothing to stop anyone from hiking in."

"Then we should at least announce that there's a dangerous killer on the
loose."

The ranger manning the desk was listening to this exchange with intense
interest, though he was studiously watching the door. Langbein grabbed
Mulder's arm and pulled the agent into his small office. "You're joking,
right? A few years ago, a man visiting with his family went on an evening
jog. He fell off a hill and died; they found his body the next morning. It
was in all the papers around here. The next month, what do you think
happened? Three times as many hikers went on that trail as usual. Joe Citizen
can be one dumb fuck when he tries to be."

"Can't you just tell people to turn around when they get to the gates?"
Mulder could tell that it was futile, but he had to try. It was his lot to be
a modern-day Cassandra, telling people what would happen if they ignored
him--but of course if they didn't ignore him, his predictions wouldn't come
true, so he was in a bit of a bind.

Langbein was breathing heavily, working on his answer. "We're telling them
to stick together, not to go anywhere alone, and avoid the smaller trails
because there's still ice on a lot of them--true, actually--because it's
dangerous, and that's as much as I'm authorized to do." Langbein produced a
handkerchief and swiped at his face, trying to get the sweat out of his eyes.

"Authorized?" The word triggered a realization. "Who told you not to close
the park?"

"Someone with more power than you, Agent Mulder." The ranger's full lips
turned downwards in a scowl. He wasn't thrilled with the order, but he'd obey
it.

One last try. "More people will die. Or is your pension worth more than that
to you? Guess you only have a few more years before the full benefits, right,
and isn't that worth a few fat tourists?" He could hear his voice rising, his
tone turning shrill. If he were Langbein, *he'd* ignore Mulder. But he
couldn't help it.

The other man shook as if trying to throw a weight off. He reached into his
pocket and pulled out a handful of pictures. "This is my little girl Diane.
See her?"

The shots were professional-quality black and white. Hopscotch on a
playground, a walk through the forest, waiting at a bus stop. There were
other children in the pictures, but the center of each one was the same
blonde girl, probably nine years old. She was as fair as Langbein, but she
looked lovely with it, not overstressed.

"Yeah, the victims were somebody's kids too. So what?"

"I didn't take these pictures, Agent Mulder. I got them with the same
message telling me not to close the park. When this is over, I'll probably
lose my job. I *deserve* to lose my job. But that's my baby girl there. I
pray that God forgives me--" He broke off.

Langbein turned away, breathing deeply and struggling for control. "You'll
just have to catch this psycho before he kills again. Isn't that what you
do?"

Mulder's superego, that lovable little voice with its mix of Bill Mulder and
Patterson, chimed in. That's right, Mulder. If you do your job, then no one
has to die. And if you don't--well, bug-hunting takes its toll on those
*real* skills of yours, doesn't it? So sad, that these people had to die for
your obsessions.

He shook his head. He wanted to blame Langbein for his cowardice, but that
smiling round face from the surveillance photos stopped him. She walked home
through the forest every day, of course, like every other kid around here.
The forest was her companion, even though it held killers. Langbein's love
controlled him--as it should; the world shouldn't reward love with blackmail,
and Langbein must have thought that it didn't until he'd seen those photos.
Langbein hadn't thought that park rangers would get caught up in intrigue and
danger, so he'd allowed himself to make promises and commitments. Mulder
couldn't fault him for the accident of becoming part of a useful diversion
from real X Files.

Mulder left the office, stalking past the curious ranger at the front desk,
and headed back to find Scully.

End Acadia 6/10

Acadia 7/10
RivkaT@aol.com

Over lunch at one of the tourist traps, about twenty minutes from the park
itself, Mulder discussed the new information with Scully, who'd conducted her
own investigation as best she could with the limited facilities available.

Mulder told her about Johanna, including a description of the woman's hair
for entertainment value, and then described the conversation, including the
addendum in the parking lot.

"I was right--Pierce was the only non-native ASL speaker; the others were
either Deaf of Deaf or exposed to sign from very early on. Pierce signed
badly; he probably didn't get the syntax exactly right. Our UNSUB could tell.
He knew Pierce was a failure, even within the group of defectives."

Scully looked dubiously at him. "Defectives?"

Mulder waved a hand. "What he sees. And I think Pierce could understand the
killer, unlike the others. I think maybe he was able to separate Pierce out
because the killer can influence the people he talks to. If those kids
weren't Deaf, they might all be dead now."

"Excuse me?"

"Look at it this way. If you were a tree, what would you most lack? If you
wanted to have an impact on the world, I mean."

"Mulder, if I were a tree I wouldn't give a damn about 'having an impact.'"

"But if you did--you'd need someone who could move around. But more than
that, you'd want that person to *talk* for you."

"I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues?"

"Very good, Scully, I didn't know you were a Dr. Seuss fan."

"So you think the trees talk to our killer, and then he talks to the victims
and gets them to go along with him." She said it without the usual tone of
disbelief, as if that would be overkill.

He sighed. "Let's just say he *thinks* the trees talk to him, and that he
can do things for them they can't do for themselves. Including influence
other people even though he looks crazy and kills them."

"You got all that from talking to one witness who's not even sure who she
saw?"

"I think he's killed everyone he's met since the spree started, except for
three people who were fully Deaf. That's a good enough lead for me."

Scully reacted not at all. "So are you going to go out with her?"

Good grief, Scully must have some sort of radar that told her when
attractive women were around him.

"Nah. I don't date women whose hair requires or receives more attention than
mine."

He'd got her. She couldn't resist. A small smile, but a smile nonetheless.
It felt like a huge victory, until he realized that it felt like such a
victory and got depressed all over again.

Scully finished her salad and pushed the plate away. She was trying so hard
to force down food that would give her energy, he could tell. He remembered
meals not so long ago when she'd easily eaten everything in front of her, and
left the table hungry. She'd gained weight during the abduction, and every
pound reminded her of the unknown in herself, he thought. Her dieting had
been fierce and successful. But now she was dropping weight again, this time
against her will.

He watched her bring the napkin up to her mouth and clean herself with
small, methodical movements. She didn't even have to think about it. She
looked up at him and dropped the napkin into her lap.

"I took another look at the first--at Pierce Reddy, based on what you said
last night," she reported. "There were traces of what might be semen on his
clothes; since there was no sign of sexual assault, the clothes were
overlooked after they'd been removed from the body. They put the socks and
the underwear in the same bag, can you believe it?" Mulder shrugged; his
evidence control procedures weren't any better, since there was no accepted
procedure for managing the kind of evidence he liked. "I sent a sample to
Boston," Scully continued, undaunted, "and with any luck we'll get a DNA
profile and have a way to screen any suspects we apprehend."

Mulder put the last of his fries in his mouth and nodded enthusiastically.

* * *

Mulder spent the rest of the day walking the trails, trying to get a deeper
sense of what Acadia was like, letting it fill his senses and his thoughts.
Maybe he could find the killer's new lair--it would have to be hastily
constructed, which could make it easier to find.

The interesting thing about the mountains here was that they were so small,
relatively speaking. They were the tallest on the East Coast, but that wasn't
saying much; their treelines were fairly low (which, Mulder recalled, was
what led the Frenchman who'd first mapped the area to call the island Mt.
Desert). It was as if the whole area had been compressed in size, to bring it
down to a more manageable, human level.

That was what made it so attractive to tourists--they could bring their kids
and still make it to the top of a mountain. Especially if they just drove, of
course. Not very easy on Mt. Everest, but perfectly simple in Acadia.

It was peaceful. Not even birds or squirrels disturbed his wanderings, much
less other people. People were so problematic. They littered, they chattered,
they hunted and they destroyed. He wondered what the aliens saw in humans,
that they would bother experimenting on such imperfect creatures. Maybe
humans are the equivalent of lab rats, he mused, pestilent and disgusting
unless kept under firm control.

The soil was a thin skin over the mountainside; it was rough and full of
large chunks of decaying matter. Time and earthworms had not yet worn down
all the components into a fine, rich dirt. As he walked, his boots exposed
large fragments of last season's leaves, wet and brown. Earthworms seemed as
rare as birds--there were a few when he poked at thicker patches of soil, but
not many.

Was the system breaking down? If Acadia were dying, that might explain the
killer's twisted attraction to the place: an emblem of human failure. In
attempting to preserve the park for recreation and enjoyment, the government
had neglected to note that nature was not about human vacations. Parts of an
ecosystem can't survive in isolation. Hadn't he read that the beavers, one of
the park's perennial attractions, were dangerously inbred because there were
no beavers in neighboring areas with which they could interbreed? The same
was true of the spruce grouse, whose habitat was now down to a few isolated
stands of spruce within the park. And there was the smog that, during the
summer, would obscure the views from the mountaintops; he'd seen pictures in
the rangers' station comparing days without pollution to days with. In the
latter, the nearly infinite vistas from Cadillac Mountain had been cut off
after a few miles.

Vacations for the masses--Rockefeller, in his charity and wisdom, had
decided to make Acadia available to the proletariat and had donated thousands
of nearly pristine acres to the government. But the proletariat was never
content with visiting, or even possessing. It had to alter. So in summertime
Park Loop Road would be a parking lot, and people would wait patiently in
their cars, sometimes looking out over the ocean and sometimes just fighting
over who got the Game Boy next, until the line crawled forward and they were
two car lengths closer to a *real* attraction. And then they'd wonder where
the dolphins and the beaver went.

As for the hikers, they were better than the drivers, but there would still
be so many that the mosquitoes wouldn't have to choose or chase; they could
just wait, and their prey would arrive. One party would never be out of
earshot of at least one other group. And as careful as they were, they'd
always break a branch or crush a water strider or leave a plastic bag
somewhere on the trail. It was inevitable. It was human nature.

And the best maintenance the government could afford wasn't helping.
Rockefeller had hired a hundred and thirty men to maintain the more than
sixty miles of car-free carriage roads he'd constructed through the park.
Then he'd given it to the United States, and Uncle Sam paid six people to do
the job. Was it any wonder that trash collection ran a little slow?

Acadia was being stomped to death.

Mulder could imagine the trees seeking a champion. Birds could fly away if
necessary; beavers could migrate. But the trees were stuck with their
location, exposed to the grubby hands of whoever cared to slash through the
trails. Were the trees calling the killer's name? Did he hear the summons to
combat when he saw the faces moving through the bark?

If Mulder watched out of the corners of his eyes, he thought he could see
the faces too. Their expressions were grave and concerned. They were not sure
if he could be trusted. The patterns in the bark were as individual as
fingerprints; no two were alike. He was reasonably sure that even Scully
would have to agree, though she wouldn't care.

He could feel that the killer was walking through the forest. Alone,
searching for another victim, walking the trails with loving attention. He
understood the difference between each tree and the next; he *cared* about
the trees and their infinite variety, more than most people care about their
children. Maybe that solicitude had roused the trees to speech.

What would trees sound like, if they did call out? Trees fall, and perhaps
they make noise whether people are in the forest or not; it's just that meat
is deaf to wood. And so few people care about bridging the gap, more
comfortable with small cute flowering plants than the kings of the forest.
Phallic, larger than men, capable of taking care of themselves or destroying
cars and houses when they topple in a storm, trees are disconcerting unless
they are ignored, excluded from thought and attention.

If the trees had found a champion, should Mulder really be trying to lock
him up?

He shook his head in disgust. Being alone in the madman's milieu was making
him stupid, making him sympathetic. If only he and Scully were getting along
better, she'd be able to manage him and keep the voices from getting too
strong. But if he tried to describe what it was like, she'd just dismiss it
and demand another look at his head, as if cells and blood could explain the
mysteries of consciousness.

Their idiot killer, anyway, was only making it worse for the trees.
Langbein, much as Mulder hated to admit it, had a point. He and Scully would
never have infested Acadia if not for the killings, let alone the
curiosity-seekers who'd now be able to follow a 'Murder Trail' with all the
best death spots. Acadia didn't need an executioner; it needed a perimeter
guard.

Well, he thought with grim humor, at least no one would be likely to believe
the killer that the trees made him do it. There would be no treehunts as a
result of this case, which was better than some of their other
investigations, where people feared witches and attacked women.

* * *

Scully had returned to the newly-identified Pierce Reddy, who had not yet
been allowed to rest in peace, right after she'd finished with the latest
victim. With only a funeral-home director to assist her, it had been a
difficult and unpleasant job, without much to recommend it. They knew how
these victims had died; the question was *why*, and she felt useless in
making that determination.

As with any investigation, different parts of the analysis were proceeding
at different paces. She had confirmed that Pierce Reddy was deaf from a
congenital defect. The Boston lab had also called her. The semen sample was
degraded by time and exposure, but might still prove useful. And the lab had
analyzed the samples of hair and skin from the Thunder Hole victim, and
agreed with her that he had been an albino. The research technician there,
who apparently had not heard that the X Files were the kiss of death, had
agreed to run a search of all missing persons reports looking for albinos;
Scully thought that he found it a bizarre and therefore fun task. There was
still no word on the disassembled man from the stone cairn. The crucified
woman, whose blood-stained credit cards had identified her as Genevieve
Golden, had at some point been in a major accident, probably a car crash,
that had left her with multiple scars and a right leg over an inch shorter
than her left. She would have walked with a pronounced limp. It must have
taken so much work and strength for her to go hiking in Acadia, and all it
had gotten her was killed.

All in all, it had been a day spent on minor details, too much work for too
little effort. Mulder's theory about the various defects in the victims
seemed plausible, but the man from the stone cairn's disability remained
unexplained. It might have something to do with one of the parts they had not
yet found.

She returned to the cabin, too tired to do any more investigating. Night
still fell early at this time of year, and she had even less desire to look
around the trails in the dark than during the day. The gravel in the tiny
parking lot behind the cabin got into her shoes, and she stumbled inside as
she tugged at the thick leather. They were good for hiking, but not very easy
to get off. Or maybe her coordination was going.

Relieved of her irritating shoes, Scully sat down at the small kitchen
table. She was too tired to do anything about dinner.

Mulder came in a few minutes after she'd returned. He didn't say anything
about finding her staring into space; probably he figured she deserved to be
able to act like him once in a while. Taking the initiative, he rooted around
for a passable meal. She tried to focus on the table, to make the world
concrete again. It was fake wood-grain, on top of cheap pressed wood. It
swirled and darted across the tabletop, almost as if it was real.

The weariness started at her toes and radiated upwards. She felt as if every
cell had worn itself out. The bones in her arms ached. Her hair was limp and
sticky. Her clothes chafed against her. Her head drooped down until her nose
was inches from the table. Mulder, as usual, radiated energy. Invariably, in
the past, proximity to him had energized her, but this time it just made her
feel more inert.

He'd gotten some vegetables out of the refrigerator and was preparing to cut
them up. Her eyes closed, and it was as if she were alone. She resented his
ability to keep going like a damned wind-up toy. At least he'd gotten to
spend the day in the forest. It was alive, however deformed. Let *him* put
Humpty Dumpty together again, next time.

Her eyes snapped open as she realized once again what was happening to her.
It was Dana With Cancer thinking those unkind thoughts, not the person she'd
always thought she was. She felt a rush of fear-inspired adrenaline, her
standard response to thinking about her impending death. Whether it was
tragic irony or poetic justice, her resentment was about to be rewarded:
Quite likely, he *would* be alone, next time. Even if he did find someone
else to do the forensics, he wouldn't trust another person. At least not for
a while.

"I need to tell you something."

Mulder turned, taking out a soda as he closed the refrigerator door. She had
his total attention, like a beam of sunlight.

"I wasn't--there's more, about the cancer."

He lurched downwards, into the folding chair on his side of the table. The
can in his hand slammed against the table and foamed over. Mulder cursed and
looked around for a napkin. Scully reached down beside her feet and got some
from the bag of supplies she'd brought in earlier. While he mopped, she spoke
again, struggling to keep her voice even.

"Blindness and other sensory deterioration is only the beginning as the
tumor expands into my brain. There will be mental, emotional changes.
Deterioration. I, I can't live like that. It's not acceptable to me as life."

Mulder looked up. Soda was running over his hand as he squeezed the sopping
napkins, undoing all his good work. His lower lip was trembling. "Please
don't ask me--I can't. I can't."

"I know," she said, as gently as possible, knowing that he'd take it to mean
that she thought he was weak. "Bill and I have talked about it. It's the one
thing we agree on, actually. He'll--take care of it, when it's necessary.
I've written a prescription and he'll help me take it. No one will know that
anyone but me was involved, so he won't get into legal trouble. But, I need
you to know."

Mulder's fists clenched. He threw the wet napkins away from him; they landed
against the side window with a splat. He slammed his right hand against the
table once, twice, three times. She expected him to stop but he didn't, even
though he was obviously doing damage.

"Stop it! Stop, please, Mulder, please!" Scully reached out, tried to grab
his hand. He wrenched it free and kept pounding.

Scully was as scared for him as she'd ever been. This was nearly autistic
behavior. Uncontrollable self-destructiveness while she was still alive was a
terrible sign of what to expect later on.

She had to stop him while he still had bones left. She put her left hand
directly in his fist's path, splaying her fingers across the table. He was
looking down, but his eyes had that unfocused look that told her that he
wasn't completely home.

His fist came down like a wrecking ball. Her hand was instantly on fire with
pain; every nerve in her body, it seemed, had migrated to that part and begun
screaming. Each of her knuckles had its own special song of damage.

Even as she pulled her hand into her lap, cradling over it by instinct,
Mulder's pounding ceased, and she was able to grab him with her unmarked
right hand.

"Oh, Scully," he said, and was up and around the table instantly, kneeling
beside her to look at her hand.

"Don't--think--anything's broken," she gasped. "Can't--say--same for you."

He leaned his head against her knees and she could feel him trying not to
cry. With great effort, she lifted her yammering hand, telling herself that
it would hurt the same wherever the hell she put it, and pulled his head
forward, into her lap, with her right hand. He resisted for a second, then
came, a child needing comfort.

She bent herself over him so that their heads were close together. "I hate
this too," she whispered into his hair. She remembered that it usually
smelled sweet, like coming home. She rocked back and forth in her chair,
reassuring herself as much as him. "I hate this too."

End Acadia 7/10

Acadia 8/10
RivkaT@aol.com
IV. The Pathetic Fallacy

In springtime, Acadia is underappreciated. The air bites sharply, to be
sure, but there are methods of protection. The sunlight comes through the
leaves and dapples the ground. Streams swollen to bursting rush down the
mountains, gleaming like glass where the light hits them, rounding brown
boulders and feeding the trees' roots as they wake from winter.

The trails are so nearly empty that each person might possess the park,
ruler alone of this ungovernable wilderness. Or, if assistance is needed, the
rangers have so little else to do that they are perfectly attentive, and
again the visitor is king or queen.

* * *

Mulder had to leave. He didn't say so, but she could tell that he had to
run, to get away from her for just a little while, trying to get used to this
latest betrayal. That's how he'd remember her--always leaving him, even when
he was the one running away. She didn't try to stop him. His hand,
remarkably, was undamaged, though it would ache for a few days.

Scully was engrossed in the autopsy photos, trying to understand the common
thread, when she was startled by a thump against the picture window.

She shot to her feet, grabbing her gun out of the holster on the table, and
aimed with a perfect two-handed grip directly at a highly dazed owl, who was
flapping weakly on the rough planks of the deck.

Scully froze, then laughed ruefully at herself. She watched the owl struggle
to right itself and fly woozily back into the night.

It was an easy mistake for the owl to make, she thought. The room was almost
as dark inside as the forest outside. A few electric sconces put precisely
defined cones of light onto the brownish walls. Her laptop screen glowed
blue, a shade oddly technological among the simpler furnishings of the cabin.

Through the window, she could see the black outlines of trees, swaying
gently in the wind. Between their branches, stars winked out and reappeared.

She could not hear them whispering; the glass insulated her, just as the
cancer kept her from smelling the wet life rising from the ground. If there
was a message in the silent, sterile beauty of the leaves, she could not
comprehend it.

Her fingers traced the swirls of the imitation wood table. Manufactured
design masquerading as reality--wouldn't it be better to be honest about it,
if real wood was too expensive? The photos pulsed in front of her eyes. Each
was incomplete, showing only one angle or even one object. Even when she
autopsied these bodies, they refused to yield up their greatest secrets.

Angrily, she turned the pictures face down. Her inefficacy on this case was
no greater than usual, after all. When was the last time her work had solved
a case? She saw her own precise handwriting on the backs of the Polaroids,
noting date, time and position, and it seemed worthless.

They were dead, she was dying, and the forest didn't give a damn. The forest
would be here forever, and that didn't matter either.

She recognized the signs of depression; she'd have to be an idiot not to,
inasmuch as her doctors constantly reminded her about the importance of
monitoring her mental state. But whenever she tried to move out of
depression, the only emotion she could feel was a deep and overpowering rage.
It burned in her throat, in her stomach, collected at the inside of her
elbows and on the soles of her feet. It dripped from the ends of her hair and
floated on her exhalations. It made her want to kill someone--anyone--someone
in particular--and so she had to go back to the dullness of not caring.

Scully gave up on the photos and stared out the window. In the darkness, the
trees looked perfect.

When Mulder came back, he'd exhausted himself physically. Mentally, he'd
managed to convince himself that her impending death was a matter of her
failure of faith, and he was spoiling for a fight.

He came out of the shower, hair still dripping because they'd only been
provided two towels, and started talking. "The Gunmen have a line on a new
treatment in Canada. It's experimental, derived from the bulbs of some rare
orchids...they think it could really mean something."

She shoved the pictures she'd been toying with back into their folder. The
corners stuck out, but she didn't take the time she normally would have to
align them all. "I've seen the reports on that, Mulder. It doesn't even work
in white mice."

He took two steps forward, and they were almost touching. "The medical
establishment doesn't want people to believe that cancer could be cured using
natural methods."

"That's ridiculous, Mulder." She kept her voice even with an effort. She
knew he'd hate the lecture, but it was the only way she could keep from
breaking down. "Even if you accepted that hundreds of dedicated researchers
were willing to violate their oaths, it's still true that scientists can get
as much funding for researching drugs like taxol, derived from plants, as for
researching purely synthetic drugs."

"So you're not even going to check it out?"

"I *did* check it out," she said, impatience seeping into her voice. "But
I'm not going to spend a substantial fraction of my remaining life visiting
out-of-the-way places on the chance that one of them might have a miracle. I
have just as good a chance of going into spontaneous remission in D.C., more
if you consider the stress."

"I see--just another one of Mulder's crackpot ideas, right?"

She stood up, unable to be so close to him. Outside, the trees murmured
unceasingly. Birds and insects were eating; roots were sucking up water and
feeding new leaves, preparing for the new season.

"I appreciate your concern," she said, in the flat, bored tone that branded
her a liar, "but I have to be sensible. And your suggestion just isn't
sensible."

He was silent for so long that she almost caved in and turned to look at
him.

When he did speak, the anger in his voice startled her enough to make her
spin around. "The sad thing, Scully, is that I picked you for this. I looked
around the world to choose the one person whose opinion really mattered to me
and picked someone who will never, ever approve of what I do."

Scully gaped at him, not understanding the sudden transformation. Her
regrets surged, and she used them to feed her own anger. "Mulder, no one
could approve of what you've been doing lately! Is it so surprising that I
find it hard to trust your judgment when you just put two holes in your skull
and your dura mater, for God's sake, you let a complete stranger--"

His voice was rising with hers. "What, you would have done it for me if I'd
asked?"

"Of course not, because it was idiotic! I don't expect you to listen to me
any more, but--"

"Oh, I listen, believe me. I go to you for support and you do exactly what I
expect, you don't give it to me. I guess it's a good thing I picked Mom for a
partner; if I'd tried Dad he would have beaten on me and traded away the one
thing that mattered to me--"

"At least that explains something about Krycek," she said nastily.

His head rocked to the side as if she'd physically hit him.

"Forgive me, Mulder, if I need some distance from what you've become.
It's--it's a little hard for me to deal with the fact that you let this quack
stick an icepick in your head. I mean, *your* brain was fine until you chose
to have that done. You leave me behind to do this makework, that has
*nothing* to do with the present, and then you expect things to pick up just
where they left off. Well, it won't work, not any more, because one of these
days you'll come back and I'll be gone. Gone."

She wanted to say more, but he was already crying. She felt the familiar
emotions rise, in a familiar order: guilt, resentment, shame, sadness.

"I don't want to be your mother, Mulder. I wish I knew how to be your
friend. But I don't even understand how to be your partner any more."

She pushed past him and went into her bedroom. She laid on the bed, trying
to cry, willing the tears to come. But they stubbornly refused.

The worst of it was, she wasn't crying precisely because he was so right.
The therapist crap about wanting his respect was ridiculous. The relationship
was exactly the opposite. *That's* why she didn't want him to see her
weakness; if she weren't strong she might lose the power to evaluate him.
She'd set herself up as bearing the Scully stamp of approval, and the one
certain thing about it was that nothing Mulder would ever earn that mark.
That was the standard of judgment, wasn't it?

He'd let her do it--encouraged it, really. But she'd gone along willingly
enough, wanting some power in this strange relationship where he was always,
uncannily, right and there was never enough evidence to prove anything to the
outside world and he was just too damn smart. To keep on top, or to keep
even, she had to be able to judge him.

Not a very pretty picture of herself.

Well, fine. She'd been a bitch in life, and she was going to be a bitch in
death, too. She was too busy dying to change. No going gentle into that good
night for her, and no carefully maintained dignity, either. She was going to
go messily, kicking and screaming and bleeding from her nose until everyone
turned away, ashamed to look. If dying was an art, she was going to do it
resoundingly, unhesitatingly badly. They might remember her, that way.

Eventually, the soft sounds from the main room stopped. She heard Mulder
enter his room--changing, she thought with the certainty their years together
had given her--and then the sliding glass doors opened and he left to go out
again. Maybe he could run away from some of the anger and the pain.

But no, she'd still be here when he got back.

* * *

They did not speak until the next morning at the rangers' station, when they
had to put on the appearance of Agents in Charge. Even then, it was more that
Scully would answer one question, and then Mulder would field the next.

Finally, Mulder announced that he needed some peace and quiet, and Scully
went out to the parking lot with the rangers. One of them, a tallish blond,
offered her a cigarette, and she almost took it. She felt the desire for the
nicotine rush as if she'd never given it up, sweet and seductive in her
blood, and she had her hand out--thinking, <What's it going to do? Give me
cancer?>--when she realized that this was the same funeral urge she'd felt
two nights earlier with Mulder, and refused to avoid being so predictable.

Mulder stayed inside, studying the map, for almost fifteen minutes, and then
emerged and announced that the next body would be found at--maybe even killed
at--Jordan Pond, a large, placid pond at the bottom of several of the
moderate-sized mountains. He seemed almost glad to see her there among the
tall khaki-clad men, so the two of them went to Jordan Pond House, a visitor
center with the usual overpriced snacks and souvenirs, to survey the layout
and see if Mulder could get a more specific location before the next victim
announced him or herself.

They looked for the locally famous Jordan Pond House popovers, touted by the
park brochure, but it was too early in the season and the kitchen was closed.
Mulder settled for maple sugar candy and Scully stuck to pretzels. They
wandered through the public areas, looking for good places to leave a body.
As usual, they made up by discussing the case. Mulder's theory was that the
killer wouldn't break in anywhere, because he wouldn't want to be surrounded
by evidence of civilization for the length of time necessary for a serious
penetration into the House, so they scouted the perimeter.

When he was convinced he'd found the best places, they left the walkways of
the House and went back into the sunlight. The day was bright and clear; the
grass was stiff and vibrant under their feet. They drifted back behind the
House, where various hiking trails converged so that weary travelers could
find a parking lot and a drink.

The lawn turned into forest easily, Scully thought. There was definitely a
line between the two, but there was interaction--bushes, greedy grasping
branches, hard grey roots venturing into lawnmower territory.

Mulder was not getting the appropriate vibes, so they went back to the
House, climbing the back stairs to a patio where, in season, the tables would
doubtless be packed as families took breaks and young people sucked down a
few beers. Right now, the umbrellas for the tables were furled, and the white
plastic chairs were all stacked against one wall. Scully was glad that there
weren't many people here. It would complicate the investigation, and give the
UNSUB too many targets.

And she didn't like the idea of sharing all this with a thousand others. In
the sunlight, near the well-tended walks and trails by Jordan Pond, she liked
the park much better. It seemed more organized down here than it did at the
top of the mountains. But from the rangers' descriptions, at season's height
Acadia had more campers than trees. That lovely access road with all its
breathtaking views of the ocean could get pretty boring, if you were parked
in the same spot for an hour because of a traffic jam.

Mulder motioned her over to the low brick wall protecting them from falling
off the patio. He was looking down at the ground they'd recently traversed.
Scully hurried over.

"I'm never having children." Mulder stared down at the picnic area beneath
them, where two toddlers, hair blond as cornsilk, gamboled under their
parents' watchful eyes.

Well, goody. What was there to do with a Mulder revelation? So rare, so
unexpected. Was this some sort of peace offering, telling her his personal
secrets? She did what she did best--she probed for what lay beneath. "Because
they'd get in the way of your search for the truth?"

He grimaced. "Because I couldn't trust myself with them." His arms were
braced against the railing. Veins stood out in from his forearms with the
strain he was putting on them, as if he were trying to push the iron bars
over. "Because I was raised by a man for whom love had a leather edge and a
buckle, and a woman who was a ghost town all by herself."

"But you know that was wrong. You'd make an excellent parent, if you allowed
yourself."

He looked up at her; his face was suddenly drawn and vicious. "On what
evidence do you base that, Scully? On my stellar behavior when dealing with
you?"

She took a step backwards, but he continued. "You may find it hard to
remember that I have a psychology degree, but I don't. Surely it hasn't
escaped your attention that we have a bit of a, what do they call it these
days, co-dependency? Look, now I'm hurting you. My words, my meaning, my
existence--it all hurts, doesn't it? And tomorrow I'll be very very sorry and
take such good care of you and need you so much you'll say it doesn't really
matter, not in light of what we have.

"What I don't entirely understand is where you learned your part. My guess
is that it has something to do with Daddy being gone all the time, and how he
really liked the boys better when he was home--not that anyone would ever be
so crude as to admit that, but I bet you knew it anyway. You crave the
approval you don't think you deserve, isn't that right? And cleaning up after
the messes I make shows the world that Dana Scully can hold it all together,
just like she did when Mom was mooning after Daddy and the boys were off
being irresponsible, because boys don't need to worry about keeping the
family together, and Melissa was sneaking the sailors in through her window.
Am I getting close, or do you want to talk about death next?"

Scully turned away, wrapping her arms around herself to stop the shaking.

"See," he said, just loud enough for her to hear as she walked away, "I know
exactly what I'm doing. That doesn't mean I can stop it."

* * *

Scully didn't know where to go. The rangers had finally gotten hold of the
Mt. Desert Island Search and Rescue, a group of about thirty volunteers, to
search the various trails--always in pairs or threes, never alone, in the
hopes that they'd be safer that way. Armed and nervous, they were crawling up
and down the mountains, looking for trouble. She didn't want to go out with
them; she didn't know enough about what she was doing to leave the trail, as
might become necessary. They were taking Mulder's word that the killer was
too disorganized to behave normally for any extended period of time, and so
they were checking the ID of anyone they found and engaging in conversation,
giving friendly warnings about the danger of the trails at this time of year.

That was the kind of routine hackwork that she liked least about being a
field agent, and in this case it was local law enforcement's job and she
wasn't going to join them. But she certainly didn't want to stay with Mulder.
She'd walked down the access road from Jordan Pond House back towards the
ranger station rather than be with him, hand on her gun the entire time in
case she was surprised. The risk of becoming the killer's next target seemed
less important, when she started walking, than the risk that she'd blow
Mulder's fucking head off if she had to look at him again.

As she calmed down, she remembered the dangers of solo adventuring more
clearly, but it was too late--going back would be just as dangerous, since
she was just as alone no matter which direction she walked, and anyway Mulder
probably had gone on without her. He'd have to take the car all the way
around in the other direction, miles of miles of driving, because the Park
Loop Road was one-way only by Jordan Pond House. She realized she felt some
satisfaction from the idea that he'd have to circle the entire park without
her. Let him worry, if he cared to.

She felt so useless. Mulder might complain about the indignity of being
assigned to tracking a killer on an extended spree, not even a proper serial
murderer in his expert opinion, but at least the magic word 'profiler' got
him plenty of attention and even respect from the rangers. She was doing
little more than improving upon the undertaker's skills. If there had been
useful evidence to find, she was confident that she could have found it, but
there was nothing there. She wanted to be back in the city, any city, where
everything had a meaning and a purpose and evidence actually *led* somewhere.

The sun was high overhead, and she didn't have sunglasses, so every time she
emerged from under the shade of the trees she winced. And then scanned the
area, nervously, in case someone had watched her momentary lapse. In the
shade, it was about ten degrees cooler than under direct sunlight. The grass
was lush and green by the roadside, except for brown patches near the trees
where lack of sun--or something else--was inhibiting spring's rebirth. She
was inured to the goiters and galls scattered through the trees; even the
warts and boils on the new spring leaves failed to surprise her. They were
unattractive, but meaningless. The sun made patterns on the ground and the
grass like fine lace.

Even this walk was make-work for herself, her observations so banal as to
bore even her. Unless she took up a second career as a tree surgeon, Acadia
embodied everything in which she had neither competence nor interest.

It was enough to make her wish for a new body to examine, though that would
undoubtedly prove as frustrating as the last few. Coming to Acadia had been a
bit of genius on the killer's part, genius that he was probably too
whacked-out to appreciate: With no home, no job, and no contacts with the
human world except for his victims, gathering information about him was
singularly useless. If she'd found some pollen or soil or lichen that only
grew in one place in the park on the corpses, they might have a breakthrough,
but so far she'd gathered nothing of the sort. And Acadia's resident botanist
was on safari in Africa, address unknown, so more subtle tracking was
impossible.

There was a crack from somewhere within the forest, probably about twenty
feet away from the road. Scully froze in her steps and slowly, carefully,
pulled her gun from underneath her jacket, turning so that it would not be
visible from the trees. She was standing in the sunlight, a perfect target
but for the fact that the killer didn't seem enamored of distance weapons.
The real problem was that she couldn't see into the relative darkness of the
forest.

"Is someone there?" she called.

She squinted and tried to see further into the trees. A dark face leered out
at her--then resolved into a part of a tree trunk, a scar from a long-lost
branch.

Scully remembered to breathe. "Are you lost? Do you need help?" She called
louder this time.

A bird cooed and fell silent.

"If anyone is there, please come out." Her voice sounded frightened. She was
vaguely ashamed of the weakness.

Slowly, she began to back away from the forest, gun still clutched firmly in
her right hand, half-raised to fend off a sudden attack. No movement caught
her eye. And surely the debris on the forest floor would make some noise if a
person were truly walking there.

She glanced down at her feet just in time to avoid falling on her ass when
she reached the curb. She dared a glance down the road to see if any cars
were coming. There was nothing, and so she walked into the road.

Scully walked in the center of the road all the way back to the rangers'
station. No cars passed her way.

* * *

Mulder had not returned to the rangers' station. Scully sat there for a few
hours, listening to the search and rescue teams check in every fifteen
minutes. The rangers had taken the opportunity of a park-wide search to have
the teams look for roads in bad condition, so most of what she heard was
about routine maintenance. A carriage road hard-hit by spring runoff here, a
wooden footbridge rotting there. Some trails too slippery to traverse because
of water on the lichen or a remaining layer of ice. It was, she concluded,
pretty boring to be a park ranger.

Finally, one of the rangers took pity on her. It was the man who'd shown
them to Thunder Hole on the first day; he offered Scully a ride back to the
cabin. Ranger Gephardt, that was his name. She was grateful that his uniform
included a nametag; she should have tried to remember the name, because it
wasn't as if she was going to run out of storage space in the time she had
remaining, but by the same token learning new information was seeming less
and less important to her these days. The price was that she had to answer
Gephardt's questions about the glamor and glory of the FBI; Scully trotted
out the raid on the militia and the Flukeman, as two ends of the spectrum of
danger and excitement, and was rewarded by the fact that the ranger's
excitement made him hit the gas hard, so the trip took only ten minutes. She
thanked him and went straight into the shower.

Miracle of miracles, Mulder had returned when she got out. As she dried off,
she could hear the familiar rise and fall of his voice as he was being denied
something by the person on the other end of the cellphone.

Scully leant against the bathroom door, trying to decide whether to face him
or not.

"Hey, Scully," he called, rapping his knuckles on the other side--it sounded
as if he was hitting right by her face, and she reared away. "Are you okay?"

Oh good, she thought, relieved. We're just going to ignore it. "I'm fine,
Mulder."

There was a brief silence. She heard him moving away, giving her space to
emerge. "The rangers are hopeless. Forty people isn't enough--a hundred would
be a minimum. With forty, he can just keep moving around. He won't even need
to get off of the trails to evade them. He'll hit the Precipice next, after
Jordan Pond. I think that he'd prefer to have a victim present him or herself
to him--it will be fate, if he just stumbles into the next one. I'm going to
Jordan Pond--those rangers have no idea how to approach him, and they'll just
scare him away."

Mulder's voice came through the door muffled, and Scully had to strain to
understand him.

"Hold on," she called out. "I'll be ready in a minute." Her hair would look
bad, but she wasn't dressing up for anyone in particular.

"It's all right," he said, and she heard him slide the glass doors open,
"you just wait here and see if Boston comes up with anything on the semen or
the trace evidence."

"Wait!" she yelled. The door clunked into the frame, and she heard the key
turning in the lock.

Scully ripped the towel from her head and tossed it on the floor, opening
the bathroom door just in time to see Mulder leave the deck. She searched
frantically for her shoes, shoving them on without socks, and ran outside. He
was starting the car; he couldn't avoid seeing her in the rear view mirror,
but he didn't stop.

Scully watched the car pull away, feeling sick to her stomach. She trudged
back up the wooden deck that ran around the side of the cabin and went back
inside. Methodically, she dressed.

This was a regular case. He needed her.

This was a regular ditch. He'd never admit his need, not that way. He was
still angry or afraid of her anger, and he didn't want to deal with it until
they'd caught the madman.

This was worse than a regular ditch, because it was about the cancer. It was
about losing her vision, maybe her mind, and he was taking away the last
thing--the only thing--she had.

Fuck this, she thought, and pulled out her cellphone.

He picked up on the third ring. "Ranger Langbein?"

"Agent Scully?"

She was impressed. He'd only known her for a few days. "Agent Mulder took
the car to get another look at Jordan Pond, but I just realized that I need
to examine some of the sites again. In particular, I'd like to get a look at
the Precipice. Is there any way you can send someone to take me into the
park?"

He cleared his throat. "I'd be happy to drive you there. You're at the Blue
Moon?"

"Yes." She looked out the huge glass panes that showed her the ocean of
forest. Last year, maybe, she could have had a very nice vacation here, full
of color and life. Never noticing the imperfections that were normal parts of
life.

"I'll be there in fifteen minutes."

"Thank you," she replied, a little dazed--she'd almost forgotten about him,
right there on the phone--and hung up.

Scully sank into the folding chair with its back almost touching the
refrigerator and looked out into the sunset. Above the dark green of the
massed trees, the sky was pink. Distant clouds drifted near the horizon,
fluffy and outlined with orange where their tops hit the sunlight. Higher
above, the sky was still blue, darkening slowly into cobalt as the sun faded
away.

I'm coming for you, she thought. This is not yours to own or to deny me.

End Acadia 8/10

Acadia 9/10
RivkaT@aol.com

There was a rustle in the bushes beside her, louder than a squirrel would
have caused, and Scully jerked toward the sound, pulling her gun out as she
spun.

She couldn't explain it, but the noise sounded like Mulder. Maybe he'd found
out her location from calling Langbein. "Mulder?" Her voice was high and
nervous in the darkening forest.

He emerged a few feet to the left of where she thought he was. As she turned
to greet him, she realized that Mulder looked oddly short, and he was moving
his hands--

She turned into the blow. It would have hit her in the back of the head,
probably would have knocked her out, but she took it across the cheek and
fell backwards. Her gun spun away into the leaves as she fell.

If it hadn't been for the cancer, she would have smelled him.

From the ground, he looked ten feet tall. His hair was shoulder-length,
stringy and caked with dirt. There was a smudge on his left cheekbone that
looked like blood.

He was holding a wicked-looking hacksaw, probably the same instrument he'd
used to dissect the two men.

She couldn't see her gun, though she knew it had to be within a few feet of
where she lay, pulling her knees up, getting ready to strike out.

Her vision was too blurry. Her chances were not good.

Scully had never been the type to gamble. But she looked into the killer's
face and wagered it all.

"These dead houses--" she said, and he swooped down like a hawk and jerked
her to her feet with one sharp tug at her arm.

"What did you say?"

She looked into his eyes, which were dilated with surprise or perhaps just
insanity. "Do you think you're the only one who's called?"

He shook his head. "You're polluted."

God, did everyone and his dog know that she had cancer? She should have
gotten a tattoo that admitted it, for all the world to see. A cold gust of
wind hit her back, and returned her attention to the problem at hand.

"Who better to see the truth than someone damaged by it?"

He looked her over, moving closer to her. She could smell him, finally, rank
and unwashed, the ammonia tang of urine under sour sweat. "I dreamed about
you," he said, and she almost thought that he was going to kiss her.

She shivered, not just from the wind. If the connection with Mulder went
both ways--she couldn't think about it. "You trusted me," she stated, and he
nodded slightly.

"Then let me help you." Her gun was gone, and she was about a hundred pounds
lighter than he was, but if he turned his back she could probably knock him
down.

"What's your name?" he asked, as formally as if he were introducing himself
at a party.

She forced herself to smile. "Dana. What's yours?"

"Jonathan."

"Nice to meet you, Jonathan."

"If I let you go, I have to find someone else."

"But I've come to help you. It will be easier with both of us--there are
rangers all over right now; I could say I've sprained my ankle when one comes
by, and then we could take him. To Jordan Pond, right?"

Jonathan nodded, and she thanked Mulder again. He stared at her,
scrutinizing her face as she tried not to move a muscle.

He sighed. "I'm sorry I grabbed you like that," he said finally. "I didn't
recognize you at first, and then I thought you'd come to cut me down. They're
looking for me, down at the Pond. I don't think I want to go yet."

"I came because I see you as you are," she whispered, and he smiled
beatifically.

He reached out with his free hand and touched the side of her face. His
fingers traced the line of her jaw, then moved up to her forehead, killer
communing with killer. She forced herself to stay completely still, though
every part of her wanted to cringe away from him. She'd have to play along
for a bit, maybe even fake a sprained ankle as she'd said to draw a rescuer
near.

"Are you okay, Scully?"

"I'm fine," she said automatically.

Jonathan made her start up the path in front of him, so that he could watch
her. Apparently the voices in his head weren't entirely trusting yet, though
they wanted to believe. She did not go for her gun. There was a moment when
she might have made it, but the moment passed.

It took five minutes of slow, careful descent for her to realize that she'd
never told him her last name.

"Where are we going?" she asked, to avoid thinking about it.

Jonathan looked at her, eyes widening. "Can't you tell?"

She shook her head, stuck with her mistake. "I haven't been here very long.
I'm still learning."

He stared at her, eating her with his eyes, then looked to the trail again.
"The Precipice."

The Precipice, she remembered from the map, was only about three quarters of
a mile long.

What the map hadn't explained was that it measured the length of the trail
as the crow flies, but that most of the trail went straight up.

It was an older trail. Iron bars, twisted like rope for better purchase, had
been driven into the slabs of rock that made up the path. Some were ladders
and others were railings; Scully used every one she could reach. The trail
was probably about eighteen inches wide on average, when it was on flattish
ground. It was covered with small white and grey pebbles, exactly the kind of
rocks that could trip someone up if she were trying to run.

While they climbed, he talked. About the beauty of trees, the pollution of
humanity. How he wanted to choose people who'd really leave a message--he'd
chosen the damaged, but redeemed them by connecting them with the one thing
that really mattered, the glorious forest. He'd chosen people who would be
missed ("I should have known it couldn't be you," he said, and she almost
stopped walking), so as to make his point perfectly clear: Not the most loved
person is worth one tree.

He told her about the first time he'd heard the voices, back when he was
still taking that soul-stealing medication from time to time. He'd gone into
his back yard one night and he thought the stars were talking, but it turned
out that it was just the trees, he'd been a silly fool to think it was the
stars.

He'd slipped, somehow, from living out in his back yard in Massachusetts to
living in Acadia. He didn't really know how.

But one day living in the midst of the trees wasn't enough any more. They
wanted a greater proof of his loyalty; it was so hard to trust things with
legs.

They came to a rock wall that stretched at least two stories upwards. She
couldn't see the top in the growing gloom. A wave of dizziness passed through
her, and her vision failed at the edges.

It can't be much further, she told herself. We've gone at least a quarter of
a mile--there's half a mile left at most.

Half a mile up.

There was no chance that they'd stray from the trail. The iron bars and
railings, not to mention the sheer drops on one side and the rock towers on
the other kept them on the trail far more efficiently than trail markers
could have. That meant that Mulder could find them, if he figured out that
Jonathan had decided to bring his victim to Jordan Pond rather than finding
her there.

"How did you know they were looking for you?" she ventured.

He laughed. It sounded wrong, as if something were out of order in his
chest. "I saw you. I saw all the rangers, beating the bushes as if I were an
animal. An *animal*," he repeated, outrage growing. "Why would I run? My
friends here won't run. But they don't see me, they don't really look, and so
they won't find me. You should stay away from the roads, too, or they'll see
you."

They climbed for what seemed like hours. She didn't dare check the
technological impurity on her wrist to find the true time--he was still
watching her, judging every move. She hoped his suspicion would make him
fall, but he seemed to have an innate sense of where his feet should go.

Dusk deepened into near-dark, and even in the cool air she began to sweat.
She could barely see the trail at her feet. How did he expect to find anyone
in this darkness? He didn't seem to have trouble with his footing, no matter
how dark and rough it got.

He didn't have enough time sense to tell her how long he'd been in Acadia,
but he spoke with intimate familiarity of every area in the park, listing
where he intended to strike next.

If they came upon another group of hikers, Jonathan would want to take one.
Maybe more than one, now that he had an ally. She'd have to choose, then.

The path was so narrow that the only way past Jonathan was through him. The
slippery gravel made the situation even worse. Where the bare mountain peeked
through the pebbles, it was often dotted with the ever-present black-green
lichen, damp and slick with snowmelt. More than once, Scully stumbled, and
would have fallen if she hadn't had such a deathgrip on the iron railings.

If this was Acadia, she was willing to skip it.

End Acadia 9/10

Acadia 10/10
RivkaT@aol.com

Scully was out of breath by the time they reached the top. She'd been moving
too slowly for Jonathan's taste for a long time; when she gasped, he'd look
at her suspiciously, checking for fakery. But he seemed to believe that she
truly had a stitch in her side, and he even offered her his arm over one
particularly bad patch of ground.

They climbed one more ladder, and suddenly the trail ended. There was one
more rock to climb, for purists who wanted to say they'd reached the very top
of the mountain, but they were essentially at the top. Scully could see the
outline of a trail marker against the violet-grey sky, pointing to easier
trails down the mountainside, and more trees dotted the skyline. In front of
them, the mountain sloped down gently, creating a much easier descent. She
wanted to sit on a nearby rock and rest, but Jonathan seemed impatient.

"How are we going to find anyone tonight?" she asked.

"They're looking for me. If you help, we could get two at once." He laughed,
then, a strange sound, responding to a private joke.

"Where will we sleep?"

The question angered him; he grabbed her roughly by the arm and dragged her
to one side of the rock, where the trail went up just a little further, and
pushed her forward.

Scully tried to figure out what had gone wrong. Maybe trees didn't sleep? If
Jonathan were denying himself sleep, which seemed plausible from his
hollowed-out eyes and rabid manner, he could be suffering from
sleep-deprivation psychosis on top of whatever imbalance had brought him to
Acadia in the first place. If she could afford to wait, sleep deprivation
would eventually kill him.

She was reminded that she had very little time when he pushed her so hard
that she fell, scraping her knees on the gravel. She felt the abraded skin
begin to bleed, but there wasn't even enough time to brush off the debris
adhering to the wounds, because he cursed and forced her up, again, and
forward. They were climbing the last peak; she couldn't see anything higher
around them.

They were nearing the top when he stopped, apparently forgiving her as her
defiance seeped from his memory. Jonathan absent-mindedly let go of her wrist
as he scanned the valleys below them, his eyes softening as he surveyed the
massed trees like a general reviewing his armies.

The evening was nearly silent. There were no birds, just the faint sound of
tree branches scraping against one another in the light breeze and the
whisper of gravel.

Everything happened at once: The light flashed in her eyes, blinding her,
and Mulder was there screaming her name, and Jonathan was screaming back,
ranting.

When she could see again, Jonathan had his arm around her throat, dragging
her backwards. She couldn't stand up; she was unbalanced, leaning back
against him and his voice was roaring in her ear, but the words were
unintelligible.

She choked, and realized that if she vomited she'd die like that, his arm
cutting off her air supply. With a massive effort she stilled herself and
breathed as evenly as she could against the pressure of his arm.

Mulder wasn't screaming any more. His gun was aimed, almost casually, at the
two people standing a few yards above him. His voice was calm and rational;
Jonathan wouldn't be able to hear the desperation underneath.

"Let her go and everything will be all right."

"Meat liar," Jonathan growled and dug his arm in a little harder. Scully's
arms flailed, finding no purchase against his body or the rock wall they were
pressed against.

"Oh please. 'Meat,' what is that, some kind of insult? Did the trees teach
you that? You don't know a thing about them, you idiot."

"I know *everything*! I'm the one they asked--"

"You *wanted* to be asked by them, you mean. You're too ridiculous for them
to give you the time of day. I'd be disgusted by you, if I weren't too bored
for that. We've seen a lot of monsters, and you're not even the worst this
week. You're stupid and no one will remember why you killed because of that."

Scully's eyes darted between the two men. She had no idea what Mulder was
thinking, taunting Jonathan like that.

"Meat will remember and it will stay away," he said petulantly. "Just like
they told me."

"Bullshit, Jonathan. You're doing this in springtime because you can't face
all the people in summer, people who'll come and think of you as just another
bit of local color--just another attraction."

Jonathan shoved Scully roughly against the stone wall; she stumbled and
nearly slid upon the night-black lichen, but managed to grab a hunk of rough
granite protruding from the mountainside. Mulder shrunk back, almost
imperceptibly. Jonathan was no longer choking her, but he still had his
hacksaw and a hundred-foot drop, if he cared to wrench her away from the wall
and throw her down the mountain.

Scully looked at Mulder in near-fury. <Shoot, goddamn you, shoot.> She knew
he could tell what she wanted, just as she could tell that he wouldn't fire
as long as Scully was in any danger.

Scully's anger seemed to help her partner recover. "You don't really hear
the trees," he began.

Jonathan laughed. "Now I know you're just trying to delay this."

"*I* know," Mulder said. His voice was low and hoarse, cruel as barbed wire.
"You just think you hear them because you want to, but you're not worthy. How
do you think I found you here? They like me better."

"Liar!" he screamed, spittle flying from his mouth and landing on Scully's
face. Scully simply gaped at Mulder, for whom she had simply ceased to exist.
His eyes were locked on Jonathan, not even scanning for her safety in his
peripheral vision as he'd always done before.

"Ask them, then," Mulder sneered. "Ask them what they want you to do,
Jonathan. They'll tell you: Go away. You bore them like you bore me."

Jonathan hit her again, still not understanding that Mulder was so focused
that he didn't care about her anymore. This time the blow landed on her back,
and she landed bruisingly against the wall, clutching for fingerholds to
prevent herself from falling down. One foot slipped, and she landed hard on
her knee, but she didn't move from the wall. She tried, but she couldn't do
it. It was as if iron bands were pinning her right where Jonathan had thrown
her. She turned her head from the dirty rock and saw Jonathan, his head
tilted back, face contorted in a silent yowl of anguish and rage.

She heard Mulder's feet on the gravel as she struggled to stand, turning to
fend off any further assault from Jonathan.

Mulder had almost reached the insane man when Jonathan stiffened--like a
tree trunk, Scully couldn't help but think--and wailed. He was looking up at
the sky, but by the sound of his voice he was seeing straight into Hell.

A faint look of surprise appeared on his face. "My brother's blood cries out
to me from the ground," he said, and half-turned towards Scully. He shook his
head once, as if stunned by a sudden blow, and pitched over the rock face
backwards.

Scully saw the look on his face for just a second, before he disappeared
from view. He was relaxed, accepting. Not happy exactly, but as close as he
was going to get.

There was a muffled whump as his body hit the trees far below. Mulder
flinched.

The pressure was gone, and she shot to her feet almost fast enough to
unbalance. She grabbed the rock, and it was over.

* * *

When she got back to the cabin after the autopsy, Mulder was out on the deck
again. His feet dangled off it, swinging gently, banging into the wood with
every few movements. Probably the pain reminded him he was alive.

He was staring into the sunset as if he hoped he'd go blind.

She missed the old days, when she and Mulder could at least take turns
breaking down. Resentment flooded her, as intense as it was unjustified. Why
did he get to be the one who needed care? She was the one dying, and somehow
he was the focus of both their solicitude.

She walked over to him and put her hands on the railing, flexing and
tightening them rhythmically, releasing the anger into the dead wood. It
absorbed her emotions without complaint, and in a few moments she was ready
to talk. She sank down beside him, letting her legs swing free.

"It seems that there are tumors everywhere, these days. Jonathan had a tumor
in the hippocampus. It had spread to the left brain, which might explain the
increasing grandiosity of his visions. If...if what we've experienced before
is any guide, it might have enabled him to influence other people, so that he
could separate them from their companions and begin his assaults before they
understood what he was doing. It might explain why Genevieve Golden didn't
struggle as he was nailing her to the mountain, anyway."

Mulder grunted.

"How did you find us?" she asked him, genuinely curious.

He waved a hand in the air. "When Langbein said you'd gone to the bottom of
the mountain, I thought you'd look at the Precipice. And when I found your
gun--I knew he'd take you there. I told them to look on all the other
trails--didn't want them to spook him."

She nodded, satisfied. She should chastise him for ignoring backup, but the
trail had been too narrow for more people to give any assistance, and his
successful taunting had worked, after all.

"Scully," he began, then hesitated. She stared at him, and finally he met
her gaze. "I'm sorry...what I said..."

"You said you'd say you were sorry, too." Why couldn't she control what came
out of her mouth? Why did it always have to be cold whenever he was ready to
open up?

"I think--Jonathan Reiker was a very angry man. I, I tapped into that
anger--one way or another, and--"

"Did you say anything you didn't believe? Did you lie to me, Mulder?" A
direct hit, and he actually flinched. She folded her arms across her chest,
seeking some sort of protection, and wished for a regular business suit.

He stared down at the trees. "You know better. Anger--it makes the world
look different."

"Yes, and so does regression hypnosis and so do psychoactive drugs," she
said, "not to mention getting a hole drilled in your head, that certainly can
change your outlook. You demand a fierce honesty from me, Mulder, but you
don't seem to be able to achieve it yourself unaided."

His face twisted up, lips pouting, eyes folded into labyrinths of regret.
And it was like kicking a puppy, one who knew he'd been bad and that was
worse because then he thought the intensity of the retaliation was what he
deserved, one who couldn't tell the difference between rebuke and torture.

She deliberately let her arms fall to her sides. "That was unfair of me,"
softly, so he had to lean forward to hear her. "Let's go home."

Mulder attempted a smile, bravely, and she appreciated the effort. He stood
and turned around, presumably to go to his room and pack.

A final thought struck her--the last thing she wanted to think about this
case. A loose end. A piece of evidence that didn't fit her most careful
hypotheses about Mulder's deductions.

"It was just a coincidence, what he said when he was falling," she said,
more to herself than to him. He heard the question she didn't speak, though,
and turned to her. He took her hand between his own, and pulled her up from
the deck, bringing her palm up to caress his cheek.

"I don't know," he said. "I just don't know."

His uncertainty frightened her as much as anything she'd seen in Jonathan's
head.

* * *

Mulder stared at the white computer screen and the accusing stab of the
cursor. Scully had written her part of the report, but protocol demanded a
profile, so that Jonathan could be studied and entered into a database whose
correlations would someday put profilers out of a job. At least, so the
programmers claimed. He wondered if the computers would begin to dream,
whether they'd hum at night alone in their secure buildings sensing the
slipperiness of blood that was only imaginary.

He began to write: "Jonathan Reiker misunderstood the meaning of Acadia.
Acadia doesn't have a meaning, not one that we can make our own. His vendetta
against humans was just more of the human arrogance he believed he was
condemning. These mountains are not symbols. They are mountains. The trees do
not speak to us, nor do they have a reason to do so. Whatever meaning we make
from them is our own. To attribute responsibility to them is not so much
monstrous as it is tragically, misguidedly human."

He scratched at his chin, erased the paragraph, and tried again. "Jonathan
Reiker was a non-standard spree killer, whose spree lasted longer than most
because he operated in an isolated area. This made it difficult for him to
find victims, but equally difficult to catch him. The violence of his
murders--each distinctly, probably spontaneously, different--indicated a
desperation; he struggled for control in a world that would allow him none.
He had no ritual that needed to be followed in each killing. Instead, there
was a theme: He was protecting the land against the intrusion of humans who
were, he believed, defective. He chose particularly 'defective' people to
highlight the point. For him, it was 'culling the herd.' His thinking was
illogical and magical. I expect that school records will show low-normal
intelligence and achievement, and that his employment history was sporadic
and concentrated in unskilled jobs. A broken relationship or a death in the
family may have precipitated his flight to the wilderness, where his
isolation from people would help him sustain the illusion that the trees were
communicating with him."

There, that had all the stereotypical features and none of the philosophy,
so it would fit well on the standard form. Short, but years of resistance had
trained the folks at ISU not to expect more than that from him.

Mulder leaned back, tilting the folding chair precariously. He felt as if
he'd lost IQ points just getting into this idiot's head. Wouldn't it be a
better talent if it only allowed insight into genius? Though the world was
undoubtedly better off having its multiple murderers be mostly dumb folk
rather than Hannibal Lecters.

He tilted his head and looked at the trees through the side window. It was
so beautiful here--the trees ranged from the tiniest one-leafed six-inch high
saplings to decades-old boles, each one unique in pattern and coloring. Each
one could sustain thousands of tiny lives.

Here, death was a point on the continuum. Trees died; the forest lived
because of it. He understood why Jonathan Reiker had wanted to be one with
the trees, the doof, but Mulder felt that his own desire was more complex. He
wanted to be like the trees because they were self-sufficient and
self-satisfied. They grew or died regardless of how their fellow trees were
doing. A tree doesn't care when the tree next to it dies; it just basks in
the extra sunlight. A tree does not require the esteem of its compatriots.
And when its relatives are cut down and taken away, the tree knows nothing
about it.

Scully was tidying things up with the locals, helping them construct a
forensics kit to keep at the rangers' station in case something like this
happened again. No more running out of crime scene tape or evidence bags for
Acadia. More innocence lost.

* * *

"I can't keep doing this," she said into the phone. She'd stopped the car at
the main cabin to use the pay phone, because she had to talk to someone about
Mulder. Someone who wouldn't have him committed to prevent the Bureau from
facing a large liability suit, which pretty much eliminated her therapist. So
she'd called her mother.

Her mother's answer, though, surprised her.

"You keep saying that to me. I suppose you say it to him, too. You're like a
girl on a date who keeps saying no when the man does something. She says no,
but she doesn't do anything to stop it. And at the end of the night she feels
violated and used, and maybe she has been. But she can't be surprised when no
one else sees it that way. Fox is not the only one who bears the
responsibility for what goes on between you--for what he does to you."

Scully gaped. For a second, she had no idea what to say.

"This is about my cancer, isn't it?" she asked. "You can't blame him."

"You keep saying that, too. I never did. What are you so worried about--that
*you* might blame him, deep down? Yes, I want you to stop traveling and stay
near. I need to see you. I need you more than he does, so come home and
stay."

"I've got to go now, Mom."

Her mother sighed heavily. "Of course you do. You'll come by when you get
back?"

Scully mumbled assent and hung up.

She decided to leave the car at the bottom of the hill; they didn't have
much to carry, and turning the car around on the narrow gravel path was
tricky. She'd nearly scratched the paint several times before, and they were
both so tired; she knew that she'd have to repay the Bureau for any damage
and that she was just tired enough to let it happen.

On the way up the hill, she stopped to look at the trees. She'd never really
thought about trees before. They were scenery, obstacles, leaf-droppers.
Ominous at night, in the dark, but nothing more than big plants. She
understood animals; plants had always seemed too simple.

She stopped to touch one scaly grey bole, fingering the black crevices
between the patches of outer skin that protected it. A beetle, shiny brown
and round, scooted out of one of the cracks, right next to her finger. Give
me a sign, she implored, if it's true.

The tree said nothing to her.

Scully sighed and let her hand fall, silently cursing herself for
entertaining the insane notion for a moment. She turned--

And felt a sudden stabbing pain in her right hand, and in her head at the
same time.

Her nose was bleeding, gushing, and she tried to staunch it, but there was
something in the way when she brought her hand up to pinch her nose. She
tried to focus through the headache and the dizziness; it felt as if a steel
needle had been driven into her right hand, and she pawed at it with her
left. The foreign object came free and she pinched her nose closed.

Standing still on a hillside waiting for the flow to stop was more of a
challenge to her balance than it should have been, but she perservered, and
after a few more minutes there was no more new blood. Her forearm was covered
in gore where blood had run down, but the majority had dripped onto the
ground and quickly merged with the rest of the detritus. Scully looked down,
saw that it would take a forensics team to discover that she'd bled there,
and took a moment to appreciate the fact that her poisonous blood would
actually be able to help something else grow.

Then she looked at the object in her left hand.

It was a spruce needle, the longest she'd ever seen, wickedly sharp. From
the blood on one end, she guessed that it had gone into the heel of her hand
nearly half an inch.

She looked back at the tree, eyes widening.

If she believed now, everything up to this point would be worthless. And
everything after--well, there wasn't going to be much after, so ultimately
there was hardly any uncertainty in the matter.

Scully wiped the tender flesh between her nose and her upper lip and headed
back to the cabin to clean up.

She feared death. It had taken her a long time to accept that. More than
death, though, she feared the erasure of her life when she was gone. She
could no longer believe that Mulder would be able to find the truth for both
of then. She wished that she had more time to adjust to this new conviction.
For so long she had striven to make a mark on the world. Now it seemed that
Mulder stood behind her, erasing every track she made.

The mountains would last. Even Jonathan Reiker's acts would live on in the
memories of those who had loved his victims, but Dana Scully was about to
disappear.

She had no idea where she'd find the strength to write the report. How would
she summarize it? "I don't like the forest." No, better yet: "This case
brought me four days closer to death."

The wind moved the branches as she walked under them, and the shade from
their leaves made her shiver. The wind through the trees was not so cold as
death, perhaps. But she would recognize death when it came.

End.