Deliver Us From Evil
by S. Esty
AKA Windsinger

Synopsis: A little vignette which follows *The Calusari*. On their
drive home from the hospital after the exorcism, Mulder and Scully
decide to stop by a peaceful place for the night.

Author's note: The idea for this actually came out of a review of
The Calusari which I wrote for the X Files/ TVGossip section on
AOL. Had to get it down. Just got too overwhelmed by the
implications of this episode. Shiver.... Longer pieces from me are coming.
Hope you like this. I'm told there is gossip on the net about he direction
of the show on this topic. I barely can keep up with X creative. If anyone
can send me a synopsis of the gossip on this topic please email to me not
this newsgroup. Love you all.

***

This story is based on the characters created by Chris Carter, Ten
Thirteen Productions and Fox Broadcasting. Used without permission
and no infringement is intended. Thanks guys (unisex personal
pronoun intended), for creating this marvelous stuff.

Copyright 1995 by S. Esty

"But you must be careful, it knows you." - elder Calusari to
Mulder, *The Calusari*, X-Files, April 14, 1995 (Good Friday)

"...for neither innocence, nor vigilance can be protection
against the howling heart of evil." - Mulder's report, *The
Calusari*...

'Deliver Us From Evil' - From the end of the Christian prayer
*The Our Father*: '...And lead us not into temptation but deliver
us from evil, now, and at the hour of our death...'

Deliver Us From Evil
by S. Esty

The car moved quietly through the silent predawn streets,
heading home. Neither occupant spoke. Dana had offered to drive and
Mulder had acquiesced with a strange lassitude. He had been quiet,
so strangely quiet, since - when? Then Dana remembered. Since she
had looked up from the body of the old woman whose eyes had been
savagely pecked out to see him standing almost entranced against
the wall of that hellish room and staring into the face of that
strange little boy. What had he seen in that tortured boy's eyes?
Himself as a child? Is that what had drawn him in? Some kinship? He
had not spoken to her about what he felt and she had learned not to
ask. He had seen more since.

So had she.

Dana shivered. She had offered to drive because she needed to
do something normal. Something to connect her to the earth. She had
seen horrors these last few days she could not rationalize. Just in
the last few hours a woman had been pinned unbelievably near the
ceiling of a room by some unseen force, her own child's voice
coming from her body. Dana had seen and heard it; wished to God she
hadn't. Her own body still ached where she had been thrown through
the air to impact with astonishing force against the wall. She
could not rid her mind of the memory of the eyes on that 'child' as
he had raised the ceremonial dagger above her. He would have killed
her. She found out later it was at that moment that the strange
ceremony the Rumanian elders, the Calusari, had held in the
hospital had reached its culmination.

But at what cost? Mulder had been there. He shouldn't have
been. He was too vulnerable. Too open to those damned extreme
possibilities.

For if she had been through hell, Mulder was still in it. A
quiet smoldering hell that was strangely immobilizing him. She
still couldn't understand it. She knew now why he had had to summon
the Calusari to exorcise the child but why, after they arrived, had
he not come to her aid. He had sent her alone to face what he knew
with all his heart was an murderous, unnatural evil. At least he
had called when the ritual was concluded, but by then the danger
was past and she and the child's mother were already on their way
back to the hospital. Dana had hated Mulder's protective attitude
towards her in the past but this nearly flagrant unconcern was out
of character and frightened her.

She looked over at him as she drove. His eyes were staring
unseeing out the window. Dana thought back to the far younger man
he had met in the cluttered basement office for the first time less
than two years before. She remembered how casual and flippant he
had been. How he had driven for hours strewing sunflower husks and
his pointed banter all over the car. How he had danced in the rain
just because his stop watches hadn't matched. How he had taken her
into his room to sooth her fears about the marks on her back and
how he had bared his soul to her. Though they had moved beyond
those days at least she thought they had moved together. She wished
he would talk to her.

"Have you ever read the *Wizard of Earthsea*," Mulder asked
out of the silence so suddenly she jumped.

"I've heard of it. Ursula LeGuin's the author isn't she? It's
a young people's classic."

"It's not for children, Scully," came his liquid deep voice in
the dark. "In his arrogance a young adept conjures up his own
personal devil. A small black creation of 'unlife' which only he
can see, which nearly kills him, scars his face and knows his true
name. It's an evil that wants to eat his soul. Scared me to death
the first time I read it." Pause. When he continued his voice was
tight. "I feel like I've walked into that book." <"You must be
careful. It knows you.">

"Remind me not to read it," Scully muttered. After a few
minutes she asked tentatively. "Did everything turn out alright? I
mean in the book."

"The young sorcerer escaped with his soul," Mulder said in a
sepulcher voice, "but not unchanged." Pause. The car stopped at a
red light. No other cars were on the road. When it started up again
he asked, "Do you believe what happened to you, Scully?" Dana had,
of course, told him what had transpired in that room, but not of
her fear.

"It happened."

"But you don't believe?"

"I don't want to believe."

After a few minutes, Dana slowed the car and parked. Mulder
came back from wherever his mind had taken him and peered out of
the window. "Where are we?"

"St.Mark's." Scully said opening the door. "You can take the
car home. I'll call a cab later."

As she slid out of the car, Dana was surprised Mulder did not
move over to the driver's side but joined her on the sidewalk
wrapping his long trench coat around his slim body.

"Are you coming?" she asked surprised. She had sought comfort
here before after some of their more horrific cases, but he had
always declined to join her, deciding to deal with his horrors in
his own way.

"I thought I would, if that's okay with you?"

"Fine with me, Mulder," Dana said gently.

He looked up at the heaven-reaching spires of stone. "Hey, do
these places stay open all night?" he asked with a lame attempt at
levity.

"That's when the bogeyman comes, Mulder."

As they started up the walk toward the great stone church,
Mulder sought for her hand and she felt him take it firmly in his
like a frightened child seeking protection from the dark so at odds
with the mood he had sought to set earlier. Where was the tousle-
haired, impish boy-man Dana had finally realized she had fallen in
love with? Dana looked up into his eyes and saw them shining in the
light of the street lamp. Where there had been sadness before and
pain, now his eyes were haunted as well. Dana trembled. Perhaps it
was precognition, but she knew at that moment as certain as breath
that some day, soon or late, she would look up into his beautiful
sad face and something that was not Mulder would be looking at her
from behind those eyes.

In the morning, parishioners coming into the church for the
early Holy Saturday vigil found them sitting in a pew in the back
of the church, asleep. A tall, young man, his face lined with care
and weariness, slept with his chin on the head of a red haired
woman. Nestled with her head against the shoulder of the man, the
woman's face was at rest, beautiful in its peacefulness. Her hand
rested protectively on an object she wore on a chain around her
neck. No one disturbed them.

The End (until Chris Carter and Co do the sequel)

***

In case you are interested, here are my stories so far either
finished on in progress. Feedback is always appreciated.

Series A
1. THE BOX (on ftp.cs.nmt.edu) - After 6 wks of non-stop work
Mulder and Scully are really sick of each other. A strange new
assignment taxes their already strained friendship.

2. THE VACATION (which I haven't even drafted yet: name may have to
change since there's another vacation serial that has just come
around on a.t.x.c.)

3. THE ABDUCTEE (won't be out before the end of April at the rate
I'm going. About 240K) A woman from one of Mulder's eariest cases
whose strange behavior M had wrongly explained as being caused by
abduction comes back with an unusual request and a new assignment
for Mulder. Scully is given a new partner.

4. MEMORIES (Will be out any day. Waiting for it to come out on
EMXC first.) Mulder has been gone for 2 wks on a case. As a
homecoming, Scully prepares a romantic dinner at his apartment but
has an unexpected visitor.

5. JUST THE TWO OF US (Out in Mid May.) - Scully has disappeared
and Skinner forces Mulder to take Evan Byers (from Abductee and
Memories) along as they look for her.

These stories in the series can all be read independently.
(Hey, I didn't say I had to deliver them in order. The writing muse
is definitely 'She who must be obeyed.')

Also:
DO NOT GO GENTLE (on ftp.cs.nmt.edu) - Colony/End Game Filler
DELIVER US FROM EVIL (posted 4/15/95) - Calusari follow up
WALKERS (working title: there's already a fan fiction called
'Walker'.) Coming late this spring or early summer. Really long! A
teenage boy and a two year old girl become missing in the
Appalacian woods. Will Dana be the third? Lots of UFO, Shadow
People and the affects of Scully's abduction in this one.

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"Goodbye," said the fox,
"And now here is my secret:
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;
What is essential is invisible to the eye."
A. de Saint-Exupery