Date: Sun, 16 Aug 1998

RATING: PG at least

CATEGORY: Mild MulderTorture (don't know, what do you think?) MulderAngst,
ScullyAngst

DISCLAIMER: I don't own'em. I'm just borrowing them. They'll be returned in
the state I found them. :o) They do, however, belong to CC and 1013
Productions and that's about all I have to say about that.

SPOILERS: None.

ARCHIVE: Yeah, go ahead. As long as my name and e-mail address are attached,
knock yourselves out. :o) And let me know where it goes, please.

FEEDBACK: Please! And thanks to everybody who's commented on my other
stories. All comments are welcome.

THANKS: To Mady and Laurie for all their invaluable help, which helped me
get this story under way and read for general consumption. :o) Thanks guys.
I couldn't have done it without you. *thumbs up*

SUMMARY: Mulder and Scully are on a case where an apparent serial killer has
killed some people. *big surprise* It's up to them to figure out who - or
what - is killing these people. Do they? Read the story.

--------------------------

MURDER MOST VILE

by P.C.Rasmussen

believethelie@secret.dk

AN INN OUTSIDE OF TOWN

The silence in the old inn was somehow breathtaking. Dust danced in the rays
of the sun falling through small square windows and the room itself smelled
vaguely of many types of tobacco and beer and warm wood.

Old man Shamus had found an audience for his tale who hadn't heard it a
million times over. Shamus saw it as his duty to tell all newcomers about
the Markweather incident, the tale which in his opinion kept the town alive.
It had become quite a bit more popular now since bad things were happening
on the old Markweather estate outside of town. People were being killed out
there. And there were whispers of ghostly interference.

Regarding his at least partially eager audience, Shamus cleared his throat.

"It's all about folklore, isn't it? The tale is hardly worth a mention
today. Things like that don't really happen no more. Do they?" he began, his
voice heavily accented, betraying his Scottish heritage.

He grinned, picked up his glass of beer and took a sip.

"I mean... think about it. Sometime in 1900, this boy, Joshua Stillwater,
and this girl, Ann Markweather, fall in love. I mean, this is the big thing.
The big smack in the face. Love's a good thing, right?"

His expression turned slightly sinister.

"Well, they fall in love, but we've got a real Romeo and Juliet thing going
here. The families don't approve because they don't like each other or
something. Why, nobody knows. It's a damned long time ago and stories change
throughout history. But, never mind that," he continued, waving a dismissive
hand at the thought.

"Anyhow, the girl's family is a little more pissed off than the boy's folks,
so they decide to do something about it before it goes too far. Wouldn't
want her knocked up so they have to marry and shit like that."

He paused dramatically for effect, but if he expected his audience to gasp,
he was disappointed. The woman this man had come in with rejoined them from
her visit to the ladies rest room and sat down on a chair beside her
partner, car keys in hand. She obviously wanted to get going. The man
didn't.

"So, here they are, chasing that poor kid through the forest or wherever
until they catch him. They hurt him real bad. Torture him. And they end up
hanging him. Real sad story," he said with a nod of the head.

"The kid dies and what the family doesn't know is that the girl's watching.
She sees it all, how her loving relatives torture and eventually string up
the man she loves. She goes insane. Wouldn't anybody? Hell, I would."

Yeah, it was a sad story, indeed. He had always tried to come up with a
solution for poor Ann Markweather's fate, but finding one wasn't so easy.

"She becomes kinda like a ghost, wandering around the forest at night,
calling for her lover, her soul restless a long time before she dies," he
continued with a heavy heart.

"She's real lost, keeps doing that night after night until her madness
really shows its ugly face. She turns up in the house one night with a hook
in one hand. You know, the kinda thing you use to drag big blocks of ice or
big sides of beef and shit like that with."

Again a pause for dramatic effect and again his audience didn't even blink,
although the woman looked somewhat concerned.

"Anyway, she turns up in the house and kills all her relatives, guts them
alive. Pretty gruesome, but who can really blame her, right? She's mad,
after all. - Well, the authorities catch her and she's put on trial for the
murder of her family and they also pin the murder of the lover on her.
Nobody considers that she went mad after the poor kid was killed. - Anyhow,
she ends up getting convicted because the poor kid is just too far gone to
defend herself and they string her up, too. She gets hanged for her crime.
For avenging her lover's death."

Taking another sip of his beer, he stared down at the glass for a moment,
then looked up to meet the man's eyes.

"The moral of the story?" he asked, grinning, although the man had said
nothing. "Don't let your family interfere in your love life," he said,
pulling a grin from the man.

"Nah, just kidding. The thing about the whole story is that people in this
area say they can still hear her walking around out there, calling for her
lover. Looks like her soul never found no rest. Real sad story, that. Old
folklore. And, if you're asking my opinion, I don't think Ann Markweather is
quite done with this world yet."

Dana Scully glanced at her partner, who was listening to that story with
bright eyes. She knew nobody else who would eat a story like that raw, but
he always did.

"So, you're saying that these recent murders are done by a ghost walking
around in the forest, searching for her lost love?" she wanted to know, her
tone slightly sarcastic, her eyes focused on the storyteller again.

"No, no, no," the old-timer scoffed and ordered another beer. "That's not
what I'm saying at all, luv. I'm just telling you that some nutcase has the
potential to repeat history, so to speak. The story is old, but it's
well-known in these parts."

Mulder gave Scully a somewhat exasperated glance, sometimes finding it a
little hard to stomach that she always had to pick holes in everything
without looking at the facts more closely.

"So, you think that somebody has been influenced by the story or by hearing
this woman calling and may have taken up the same trade?" he asked, voicing
a question that should have come from her.

The old-timer nodded, tapping his pipe against the wooden surface of the
table next to his fresh glass of beer.

"Yes, that's right, son. That's what I'm saying. It's a real shame, too.
Knew two of the girls he's killed, too."

This caused Mulder to frown. According to the report they had been handed on
this case, six men had been brutally murdered. There had been no girls among
them.

"He hasn't killed any girls," he eventually said.

The old-timer stared at him with that crystal-clear look of his, then shook
his head and downed half of his beer.

"You haven't been keeping up on current events, have you, boy? I knew two of
the girls he's killed, I tell you. Two days ago the first one. Yesterday the
last one. This sorry son of a bitch isn't slowing down, Mr. FBI. He's
speeding up. Don't know what his goal is. But he's killing 'em by the
numbers these days."

Mulder leaned back a little, his eyes on the man's face. Then he briefly
glanced at Scully, who simply glanced back, looking slightly surprised.

"Okay. We've only just arrived and it took two days to get here," Mulder
defended their lack of knowledge. "Do you have any idea who might be
committing these murders?"

The old man chuckled, running a hand through his dense beared. "That's what
you're here for, son," he told him. "Isn't it? Wouldn't want me doing your
job for you, now would you?"

Scully rose and took a few steps away from them, pulling out her cell phone
to place a call to the local FBI Headquarters as a first priority. They
ought to be able to fill them in on any further development in the case. And
then they would continue into town to see the local chief of police, who had
called them up here in the first place.

"Quite a knockout, that one," the old man said, nodding after Scully as she
trailed further into the inn, the phone pressed to one ear.

Mulder looked after her with a vague smile on his lips. Yeah, she was a
knockout. He had always known that. With a full-fledged grin on his lips, he
looked back at the old man.

"Yeah, that she is," he agreed, dug out a business card and handed it to the
old-timer. "Look, if you hear anything, give me a call, okay? My mobile
number is on there."

The old man nodded and stuffed the card into his shirt pocket.

Mulder thanked him for telling them the legend behind the town, then got up
and followed Scully. She had stopped at one of the windows to stare out at
the quite little town ahead while finishing her call with the local bureau.

Turning around, intending to head back to the two men, she let out a
startled gasp when she found herself face to face with Mulder.

"Damn it, Mulder," she snapped at him, taking a step back. "Stop sneaking up
on me like that."

He merely grinned broadly at her. "Sorry. Didn't mean to scare you," he told
her, his tone of voice slightly mocking. "So, what did they say?"

Scully made a face, displaying her annoyance, then stuffed her cell phone
back into her pocket. "He's right. Two girls have been murdered. Same way as
the men. Difference is that these two were no more than sixteen."

Mulder's playful mood ebbed out. "Damn," he mumbled, a little taken aback by
that information. "Let's get to the bottom of this, Scully. Let's find this
guy before he kills again."

"Sounds like a good idea," she agreed. "Where do we start?"

Giving it a moment's thought, Mulder considered all the options and made up
his mind. There really was only one avenue to take for him. He needed more
information on that tale.

"Let's start with the local police. If you go talk to them, see what you can
find out, I'll read up on this legend. Maybe there's something in it which
may lead us to the right person," he suggested.

Giving him a thoughtful look, Scully tried to keep a lid on what she thought
of this story. And it was only Mulder who could stumble across a story like
that when they were making a pit stop before meeting the local law
enforcement.

"Don't you think we should both go see the chief of police? He may have
something for us to go on right away," she suggested.

"He may. But then again, he may not, right? And, personally, I think that
this story is interconnected with the murders," Mulder replied, looking a
little on edge. "Besides, you can just give me a run-through when we meet up
again, okay?" He was virtually begging here, wanting nothing other than to
follow up on this lead of his.

With a sigh, Scully caved in. There was no discussing with him when he was
this riled up. "Okay," she said. "I will drop you off at the local library.
Just turn up at the police station, please. I do not want to have to make
excuses for why you never introduced yourself to the local law enforcement,
Mulder."

Grinning like a goon, Mulder reached out and squeezed her shoulder. "You're
the best," he stated and they left the inn to get back to their car.

***

THE POLICE STATION

The local police station wasn't exactly overcrowded and Scully felt
strangely relieved to find that the chief of police was not a handsome young
man, but rather a burly, half-bald man in his late forties. Frowning
briefly, she wondered where that thought had come from, then she shook hands
with Jackson Wills after showing him her badge.

"We don't get many Feds up here," he confessed and waved at a chair in front
of his desk she could sit on, which incidently was the only free chair in
the room. All the others were piled with files and general clutter.

Glancing around the cluttered office, she briefly noted how familiar it
looked. It reminded her of Mulder's odd-ball filing system, where only he
could find anything. The thought made her smile mentally before she shook
that thought off and returned to the business at hand.

"Well, we usually don't get involved in cases like this unless they get out
of hand. And I have the feeling that this case is developing into something
none of us like to deal with," she replied, turning her attention to Wills.

"Right you are, Agent Scully," Wills said with a sad shake of the head.
"It's not every day a little community like this becomes known for being the
home of a serial killer. Do you think that's what we've got here?"

Scully briefly considered what Mulder would have replied to this one. He
was, after all, the profiler. Knowing that it could be dangerous to start
rumors, she decided to tell him the truth.

"I'm not sure if that is what it is. My partner is the profiler. He will be
able to tell you what he thinks once he joins us," she said.

"Speaking of which, where is your partner?" Wills wanted to know.

"He went to the library to read up on a story we were told by one of the
townsfolk," Scully informed him. "He believes that it may be the trigger for
these unfortunate events."

Wills nodded solemnly. "Ah, yes. You must have talked to Shamus, then. He's
sort of the town storyteller, if you know what I mean. Good as day. And he
has a memory I have yet to see the likes of," he said with a vague smile.
"So, your partner thinks that the Markweather incident may be what makes
this man kill?"

"We both think it's a possibility," Scully said, not wanting to give the
impression that she was disagreeing with Mulder.

And actually for once, she wasn't. She thought he was onto something with
that theory, although she knew Mulder well enough to know that it wouldn't
take him long to read something supernatural into it as well. The
ghost-theory old man Shamus had mentioned would make a reappearance. She was
certain of it.

"For now, we're just following up on various leads to eliminate those that
will take us nowhere. We have to narrow it down to find out what is really
happening here," she added. "Where was it that the murders were committed?"

Wills scratched the back of his head for a moment, then flipped a file cover
open. "Out by the old Markweather estate. There's a barn there and that's
where the murders took place. Real messy, too. I personally haven't seen
anything like this before in my career."

Scully nodded. "My partner and I will want to take a look at the premises
and I myself would like to see one of the victims. I'm a medical doctor. Has
an autopsy been done on either of them?"

Wills nodded. "Yeah, all of them," he said and handed her the autopsy
reports, which had not been a part of the file she had in her hands.
"Although it wasn't that difficult to establish the cause of death. This
loon kills with a sharp object. They die of shock, blood-loss and basically
having to pick their intestines off the floor."

For a moment, Scully just stared at him. Because of the missing reports, she
had not been able to read up on the way these people had been killed. Only
that they had been murdered brutally. "I see," she said, then glanced down
at the reports and the attached pictures. "What a horrible way to go," she
mused.

"Yeah, real bad," Wills agreed, then glanced at his watch. "Agent Scully, I
hate to interrupt this meeting, but I have two new murders on my hands and I
would really like to get into the general investigation of this. So, if you
don't mind, maybe we can pick this up later today? And then perhaps your
partner could join us?" he suggested.

Scully placed the autopsy reports in the file and rose, reaching a hand out
to Wills. "Naturally," she said, shaking hands with him. "That gives me a
little time to go over these reports as well. - The bodies? Are they being
kept in the local morgue?"

Nodding, Wills pulled open a drawer in his desk and produced a map. "Yup,
that's where you can find them. I took the liberty of marking a map for you
to make it easier for you to find your way around town," he replied and
handed her the map.

Scully was not used to that level of cooperation from the local law
enforcement and raised an eyebrow at the gesture when she took the map.
"Thank you. That was very kind," she said and smiled.

"Hey, we want these murders to be solved just as much as you people do.
Besides, we called you, right?" Wills said with a grin.

"Thank you again. That certainly makes things easier. We won't have to spend
so much time looking for these places." She had to admit to herself that she
was, in every sense, taken aback by this gesture.

In most cases, the local law enforcement was rather resentful to the fact
that the FBI butted in, because they figured they could solve their local
crimes themselves. This little community had called them for help, having
been referred to D.C. by the local bureau. Due to the case's nature, it had
landed in Mulder's lap.

"I'll be back here around four, so if you just turn up sometime after that,
that would be fine," Wills said.

***

THE LIBRARY

In the local library, Mulder found what he needed and much more. Frowning
down at the old history books, he wondered how many of them were telling the
real story. One thing that struck him as odd about the story was the fact
that all the versions he had read were alike. Considering that some of them
came from other districts and only mentioned the Markweather incident
superficially, there were no discrepancies in the story-line. None what so
ever. And that didn't coincide with folklore in general. It was as if this
story had been fabricated. At least in part.

Closing the third book he had been going over, he considered the
implications of this story.

'Ann Markweather, the daughter of a wealthy business man and destined to
marry a well-off man from the higher levels of society, fell in love with
Joshua Stillwater, half Cherokee and hence unacceptable as a suitor, much
less her husband. So the Markweathers decided to put an end to the kid when
it became evident that the lovers would not be parted in any other way. They
chased him down, tortured him and strung him up. And none of them knew that
poor, innocent, little Ann was watching what they did to the man she loved.'

A shiver ran through him, making him consider if there was more to the story
than met the eye. Something didn't quite click and he was set on finding out
what that something was.

'Ann went insane, a natural development after what she had witnessed, and
ended up killing her family with a hook. She gutted them alive. She was
caught and brought to justice by the local law enforcement, ending her days
much like her lover at the end of a rope.'

What was wrong with this picture? There was only one thing he could put a
finger on right away. The spirits of the dead haunting houses or areas
usually did so because they had left behind unsolved issues. And, though
brutal and horrible in nature, even stories like this one died down after a
while. They were not remembered unless there was something to keep them
going. Ann Markweather had resolved her issues before she had died. She had
avenged her lover's death. So why would this story still be around after all
these years? Why would she be haunting these parts if the injustice done to
her and her lover had been repaid before her death?

Shaking his head, he leaned back on the chair and sighed. "This doesn't make
any sense," he mumbled to himself.

An idea he had toyed with since hearing that tale started to develop into a
scenario of sorts. What if Ann and Joshua had consummated their love? What
if Ann's family had killed Joshua because Ann had been pregnant? Maybe the
baby had died or been killed by the family and that had somehow been a part
of triggering Ann's madness? But what if that child had been born and had
survived? What if that child had grown up with feelings of hostility toward
the family which had deprived it of its parents? Perhaps this child was
still around, searching out and killing decedents of the Markweather-family,
most likely having inherited the madness of its mother?

Shaking his head, he dismissed that idea immediately. According to the
history books, the incident took place in 1900 or 1901, which would make any
child of Ann Markweather's . . . dead or very old. Frowning, he tried to
rearrange the idea and started tapping his fingers on the table surface.

Suddenly, his fingers froze. If Ann Markweather had indeed given birth to a
baby and this child had grown up hating its family, as mad as its mother,
there might be a grandchild somewhere with the same inheritance.

'What if,' he thought, then rose, gathered the books, and quickly left the
library. He had to go over this idea with Scully. She would be able to pick
holes in it if there were holes to be picked. Rushing toward the local
police station, he perfected the idea in his mind.

***

THE POLICE STATION

Scully opened the front door of the police station and was nearly run over
by Mulder. Taking a step back to avoid a full collision, she stared at him
in surprise.

"Good of you to finally show up, Mulder. We have another meeting with Chief
Wills at four. He's quite busy, you know," she admonished him.

Mulder made a face. "Yeah, okay, I'm sorry, but I just had to read up on
this. Guess what?" he replied.

Looking up at him with a frown, she easily recognized the look in his eyes.
"I take it you found something?" she asked. She could tell by the look in
his eyes that he had come up with a scenario. And knowing him as well as she
did, she thought that she wasn't going to like it.

"Yes, you could say that. Come on, let's do lunch. I'll tell you all about
it."

Grabbing her arm, he virtually dragged her across the street to a small
diner. After ordering their food, Scully looked at him for a moment,
observing how he was fidgeting with the books he had brought, eager to tell
her what he had come up with, his mind working overtime. She prompted him
with a "Well?" and he spilled the beans, telling her his theory. He finished
around the time the waitress brought them their lunch.

Folding his hands in front of him, he eyed her with the look of a cat that
had just caught the canary on his face. "Well? What do you think?"

Scully regarded him calmly, then looked down at her plate for a moment,
inspecting the dish she had ordered. Lettuce and tomatoes and cucumber with
a light dressing on the side. Not very exciting, she decided. Glancing over
at his plate, she regarded his steak for a moment, then waved a fork at it.

"Give me a piece of that meat, Mulder," she told him, her tone calm and
conversational.

He stared at her, a little perplexed, then cut a piece off without any
further comment and dropped it on her plate with his fork.

Giving the piece of meat a somewhat critical look, she stabbed it with her
fork, then looked up at him again.

"Okay. You may be onto something. It wouldn't be the first time that
families have fought bloody battles over something which happened in the
past," she finally said, "and if the Markweathers and the Stillwaters are
still at it after all these years, that would definitely be an explanation
for what is happening. And that the killer could be a grandchild of Ann
Markweather's is not even that far fetched."

Mulder kept staring at her, a slight smile on his lips.

"Scully?"

She had started to cut a piece off the meat he had given her, but raised her
head again to look back at him.

"What, Mulder?" she wanted to know, having the feeling that she knew what
came next.

"I love you," he confessed, folding his hands, resting his elbows on the
table top and putting his chin on his folded hands.

Scully looked him in the eye for a moment, then shook her head. "Yeah,
whatever," she finally replied, brushing it off as another of his odd-ball
comments and yet somehow knowing that he might actually mean it, and
returned her attention to her food. "But I do think we should look more into
the actual case before we go running down side tracks. See if we can track
down any family members on either side. Perhaps even find out whether she
had a child or not," she added.

Her reply was expected and it thrilled him that he could no longer faze her
with comments like that. He could say what he meant, tell her how he felt,
and she would just brush it off and go on. No strings attached.

Snapping out of his sappy mood, he dug into his food instead. "That's a good
idea. How do we go about it?"

They looked at each other and said "Church records" simultaneously. Scully
couldn't help a vague smile and Mulder chuckled under his breath.

"Talk about two minds with but a single thought," he said, giving her a
roguish grin, implying other things.

"Keep dreaming, G-Man," she returned, fighting to keep the smile at bay,
fully aware what his next comment would have been if she had allowed him to
go that far. "Besides, we should take a look at the murder site and . . . I
want to take a look at the bodies and talk to the local coroner. Can we do
that first?"

Mulder nodded. He had to give her some leeway or she would kill his theory
effectively. "Okay, let's go take a look at the estate."

***

THE MARKWEATHER ESTATE

The scene of the crime was the old Markweather estate. Or rather what was
left of it. The old building stood there, with its windows broken and
structure in severe disrepair, looking very uninviting, very dead. What had
formerly been a lush and well-kept garden surrounding it was now a
wilderness. The only thing left standing in reasonable shape was the barn
building, the scene of the crime, which was fenced off with the yellow
police-line ribbons.

Scully regarded it critically. It looked rather new. Glancing around for
Mulder, she found him on the steps leading up to the unhinged front door of
the main building.

"Mulder," she called, causing him to glance back at her. "Take a look at
this barn. It looks very new."

Mulder abandoned his childhood need to go into an old house and jogged over
to Scully. Stopping beside her, he looked up at the barn with a frown.

"You're right. It looks as if it's only a few years old. Do you think
somebody's using it?" he wanted to know, glancing around them while lowering
his voice.

"Stop fooling around. This is serious business, Mulder. Where in the barn
were the bodies found?" Scully retorted, waving at the folder he had in his
hand.

"Uhm . . . ," Mulder replied, all serious again while he looked through the
report. "The six men were killed by the tool rack. The two girls were killed
in a storage room. Let's go in and have a look around."

Inside, the air was the way air was supposed to be in a barn. Slightly
stuffy with the distinct smell of fresh hay and the underlying smell of
wood. Under that again was the subtle smell of rotting wood.

"Not so new after all, huh?" Mulder whispered in a conspiratorial tone of
voice and started into the enormous barn.

Scully rolled her eyes and followed him. "At least it smells fresher than
the city does," she mumbled.

Keeping the report in mind, Scully looked around for the place where the
tools were stored. She found the tools at the end wall of the barn and
steered toward them. Squatting down, she took a look at the dirt floor of
the barn, eying the rather large blotch there. "Take a look at this,
Mulder," she said, waving him over.

Mulder crouched down beside her. "That's an awful big blotch, Scully," he
said after a moment, glancing at her with vague discomfort in his
expression.

"Yeah, well, six people have been killed here by having their stomachs
ripped open. That makes for a lot of blood," she told him, shaking her head.
"What a way to go."

"Yeah," Mulder replied, sounding uneasy for a moment. Rising again, he
looked around the barn for a moment. "I would dare the guess that this is
somehow family related, Scully. That someone is picking off people here
because this is the Markweather estate. And if this is the grand-son of Ann
Markweather, he may very well be mad."

Scully got up as well, her attention on the tool rack. "Maybe," she mused.
"What I don't understand is if these six men were killed right here by the
tool rack, why didn't they try to use some of the tools to defend themselves
with?"

Mulder turned his attention to the mostly rusty old tools and frowned.
"You've got a point there," he agreed. "That is kind of strange, isn't it?"

Glancing up at her partner, Scully felt a shiver run through her. "Something
about this scenario doesn't click, Mulder. Something doesn't make sense. I
just don't know what yet."

"I think I do," he said after a moment. Turning his head to look down at
her, he felt the same kind of shiver run through him. "We're talking about
six men here. Big, strong guys who get wasted by having their guts literally
turned inside out. If they were killed here, which seems to be the case,
they would have tried to defend themselves. Something must have divided
their attention. Something must have made them unable to defend themselves."

Frowning, Scully tried to follow his line of thinking. "You're saying that
there may be two killers?" she asked after a moment.

"Maybe, Scully. But, wouldn't it serve as a plausible explanation if they
saw something which distracted them enough to give the killer the chance to
rip their guts open? Like Ann Markweather's ghost."

For a moment, Scully didn't know what to say. However strange it did sound,
it could be an explanation. A far-fetched one, but still an explanation.
"Well . . . that may be, Mulder, but . . ." With a sigh, she shook her head.
"I would like to take a look at the bodies, to find out if the coroner has
any idea what the murder weapon might be."

"Could be a hook, couldn't it?" Mulder mumbled, then nodded. "Okay, let's
get back to town. You take a look at the bodies and talk to the coroner and
I'll get started on the church records. See if there's anybody left from
either family."

"Just a second. We haven't taken a look at the second crime scene yet, where
he also put the bodies after killing them. There's a storage room
somewhere," Scully replied and looked around. "Over there, probably," she
said, pointing to a narrow corridor leading off to the right. On one side of
the corridor there was a corral and the other side was closed off.

They found the door to the storage room at the end of the corridor together
with another door leading outside. Stepping into the dim room, Scully
squinted and glanced around. Old sacks of grain lay piled up in the
right-hand corner of the room the furthest from the door, some of them
ripped open, leaving old, dried-out grain to have spilled all over the
floor. On the left hand wall of the room there were shelves with a few odd
things sitting around on them, all dusty and cobwebbed. On the floor below
the shelves, the outlines of the six bodies were very visible.

Scully found the murder site of the two girls, who had been killed with one
day in between. They had been murdered in the pile of grain and the blood
was still visible. Pushing the tip of her shoe into the grain, she stared
down at it for a moment.

"There's not much here, is there?" Mulder asked after a moment. He tilted
his head back and looked up toward the high ceiling, noting a rather broad
shelve running the length of the room at the top. There was a ladder mounted
on the wall leading up to it. He regarded it thoughtfully for a moment.

"No, there isn't, Mulder," Scully agreed, then sighed. "Well, let's head
back to town. This place doesn't really seem to offer any clues," she added
and turned for the door.

"Nope, you're right about that," Mulder agreed and followed her out,
something nagging him. He felt as if he had overlooked something, but
couldn't get a grip on what that should be.

***

THE LOCAL MORGUE

Scully had taken half an hour to examine two of the corpses herself and had
talked briefly with the coroner, who unfortunately didn't have anything to
add. Finishing up on the latest victim, she pulled the latex gloves off and
sighed.

All victims had been murdered in a similar fashion. A sharp object, probably
a hook, had been used to slice their stomachs open from right to left,
indicating that the killer was right-handed. The incisions were almost
surgically precise and the murder weapon had to be razor-sharp to perform
cuts like that. But that was all there was to it. Scully had assumed that
the girls had been sexually assaulted before or even after their murder, but
there was nothing indicating this. One of them had even been a virgin.

Her talk with the coroner had given her nothing. She had asked him about
possible suspects, but he had told her that he couldn't imagine who would do
such a thing. And the assaults themselves gave her no information about the
killer at all.

***

THE CHURCH

Scully joined Mulder in the Church of St. Kathryn's, where he had spent the
time going over the church books in search of any descendants of either
family. He was frustrated by the time she got there, so she decided to sit
down and give him a hand.

The church records had turned out to be very complete and the Markweathers
were mentioned all the way back to the 15th Century. But there was no
mention anywhere of the Stillwaters.

An hour after arriving at the church, Scully looked thoughtfully down at the
latest mention of a Markweather to be baptized in the church and tapped her
pen down on her pad for a moment, where she had made notes on what she had
found. Then she looked over at Mulder, who had both elbows on the table top
and his fingers buried in his hair, his expression exasperated while he went
over another of the church books himself.

"The last Markweather to come through here died six months ago, Mulder," she
said. "She was buried here." There was something about this which troubled
her, but she couldn't quite put a finger on it right now.

Racking his fingers through his hair to smooth it out, Mulder slumped on his
chair and looked over at her.

"Yeah. And there's not one Stillwater mentioned in these books. Not one."

"So, maybe they belonged to another parish," Scully suggested, a little
taken aback by the tone of defeat in his voice.

"Maybe so, Scully, but still. It's like they never exis...." He trailed off,
a light coming on in his eyes. "Unless Joshua's father was Cherokee and not
his mother as I initially thought. Maybe they were living among the tribe
rather than living in town."

Scully slapped the old book in front of her, raising a cloud of dust, and
smiled at him, aware that he needed some cheering up before he decided to
hit rock bottom on this clueless case. "Of course. Good thinking, Wise Guy,"
she said. "That would also account for why the Markweathers were so set
against a union between Ann and Joshua. The mingling of races was not a
well-accepted issue back then."

"Right." Mulder closed the church book and stood up. "Do you think there are
still any Cherokee in this area?" he asked.

Scully closed the book she had been going through, too, returned her pad to
her pocket and gave him a strange look.

"We have to be real careful about voicing any suspicions, Mulder. Let's just
get things straight before we suggest that to anybody else, okay?"

He nodded. "You're right, of course. - Maybe we should find a motel closer
to town. Something tells me we'll be here for a while," he said, holding the
door open for her. "What did you find out, by the way?"

Scully stopped beside the passenger side door of the car and looked over at
him, her expression somewhat tense. "Nothing. I could only determine that
the autopsy reports on the victims were correct. And I found no actual
clues. Except if you tend to lean toward the opinion that life copies art.
This case has an eerie resemblance to that movie. Scream I think it's
called."

Mulder stared at her for a second, then grinned. "You're starting to think
like me. I like it," he said and unlocked the doors.

"Perish the thought," Scully mumbled and got in the car.

***

THE POLICE STATION

Wills greeted them both in a somber way, looking none too happy about the
whole thing. "Agent Mulder," he said, shaking hands with Mulder. "Sorry
about the mess in here. We're a bit hung up about these murders," he
apologized for his messy office and quickly removed a pile of papers from
one chair. "Please, sit down."

Both Mulder and Scully sat down. "So, have you found anything new?" Scully
asked.

Wills shook his head. "I wish I could say yes, but . . . the fact of the
matter is, we have no clue who's doing this. And we have no damned idea how
to find out. - How about you? Did you come up with anything?"

Mulder glanced at Scully, who in turn gave him a warning glance, then he
smiled. "Well, I believe that this is somehow tied in with the Markweather
incident. The murders are, after all, being committed at the Markweather
estate and the way these people have been killed . . ." he explained.

Wills nodded. "Yes, your partner suggested this connection," he agreed, not
failing to notice the surprised look Mulder gave Scully.

"Anyway, what I would like to know is if there are any Markweathers left
alive, who might not be in the church records," Mulder went on.

Wills frowned a little, then shook his head. "Nope. Not unless they've
hidden out there for all these years. The last Markweather died six months
ago. Old Mary Markweather. She was Ann Markweather's daughter. It's a little
known fact which has, for some strange reason, not been included in the
tale. Strange old woman. Not right in the head, if you know what I mean.
After the incident, none of the other Markweathers ever got any families or
had any children. The Markweathers in general weren't the sanest people
around. Too much inbreeding if you ask me."

"Right," Mulder said. "Is there anybody left of the Stillwaters?"

"Yeah, there is. He calls himself Loony Eagle, but he's not mad. Just a
little . . . different. He thinks the whole story is a hoot. Considering
that Eagle is about . . . well, he must be nearing the hundred, it's quite
possible that he might have known Joshua at least. And as it goes with
stories like this, he has his own version of it." Looking from one to the
other, Wills finally realized what Mulder might be thinking. "If you think
he might be the killer, you can think again. He's a harmless old man. He
hardly ever leaves that cabin of his and he's not anywhere near the strength
it takes to kill someone with a hook."

Scully merely raised her eyebrows. "We would like to visit him and talk to
him. If his idea about the story is different, we might be able to come up
with something from that. I personally think that we should try to solve
this case as fast as possible before this man kills again."

"Oh, I agree, Agent Scully. No contest there. Just don't go thinking that
Eagle did it. He wouldn't be able to." Taking a piece of paper, he jotted
down an address. "Here, that's where he's living. He'll be happy about the
visit."

Mulder took the note, then nodded. "Thank you. We just want as many
varieties of the same story as we can get. Somewhere, there's a clue as to
who the killer is. I'm sure of that."

Wills got up and shook hands with both of them. "Good luck. And I hope
you're right."

An idea popped into Mulder's head and he turned back to Wills before leaving
the office. "Did Mary Markweather have any children?" he wanted to know.

Wills frowned a little. "Not that I know off, no. But, as I said, she was a
weird old hag. Nobody much liked her and she kept to herself most of the
time, living all alone out there on the old estate."

Mulder nodded. "Thanks. - Oh, before I forget. When did these murders start
up? I can't remember seeing any dates on the murders."

"They started about six months ago," Wills replied. "That should be in the
autopsy reports. Agent Scully has those."

"Thanks again," Mulder said and finally took his leave of the Chief.
Something was amiss and he knew it was only a matter of time before things
started clicking into place. There was a connection. He just had to get it
right before he could put this puzzle together.

***

OUTSIDE OF TOWN

Eagle's cabin was so secluded that they had to park the car on a side road
to the highway and walk up a long trail before getting there. It was a
beautiful area, very quiet and undisturbed.

Mulder knocked and was a little taken aback by the frail-looking old man who
opened the door. There was no doubt in his mind that this old man could not
have killed these people. Showing his badge, he smiled. "Good afternoon. I'm
Special Agent Mulder of the FBI. This is my partner, Special Agent Scully.
Could we have a word with you?"

"Come in," the old man suggested, stepping back to let the two Federal
Agents in. He returned to his chair and his woodcarving.

Mulder glanced around the decorated cabin, noting all the signs of the man's
heritage. Feathers, pottery, images drawn on leather.

"Are you living here all on your own?" he wanted to know, turning around to
gaze at the weatherbeaten face.

The old man chuckled. "Yes, I am, Mr. FBI."

Mulder smiled a little. There was an overbearing tone to the old man's
voice.

"We're investigating these murders which have been committed here in town
and we were wondering if you could tell us a little more of this tale about
the Markweather incident."

The old man looked up, a thoughtful expression on his face, then he chuckled
again.

"Ah yes, that tale is almost as old than me," he said. "And just as
wrinkled," he added, indicating that the story may have changed a lot over
time. Carving away on his piece of wood, he fell quiet for a moment. Then he
looked up again.

"It's a very simple story. Ann and Joshua were in love. Joshua wanted to
take Ann with him to join his people. She wanted to go. And she was an
angel. Blond hair, blue eyes, skin like cream. Beautiful and good as the
day's long. But her family didn't approve. She was upper class, not fit to
live among the wild natives. So they killed Joshua. Ann went mad with grief
and horror over watching the slaughter of her love. Mad people were not
accepted back then, so they locked her up. She attacked and nearly killed
someone, so they decided to execute her. She died much like Joshua did. She
was hanged for being mad and dangerous."

Shaking his head, he stopped cutting the wood and looked up at them.

"An injustice was done and she did not have the chance to put things right
before she died. Her soul became restless. The ground where she was buried
turned sour and spat up her soul, sending it out to claim justice for
herself and for Joshua. So she returned from the grave to avenge Joshua's
death by killing those who had taken his life. But the souls of white people
are almost like the living. They just don't know when to quit."

Mulder had listened to this tale and in his opinion, it made a whole lot
more sense than the first story he had both heard and read. If that was the
way it had happened, the ghost-theory was not at all off.

"So, what you're saying is that this unrestful spirit kills what remains of
the Markweathers because she didn't get all of them back then?" he wanted to
know, wondering if the old man would fall into this little trap.

The old man looked at him, his eyes bright and alert. "No, Mr. FBI. That is
not what I am saying. Spirits don't know the difference between the living
once their task in this world has been fulfilled. Anyone who disturbs poor
Ann Markweather's haunting-grounds will meet her vengeance. Besides, there
are no Markweathers left. They died out when old Mary Markweather died about
six months ago. She was Ann and Joshua's daughter."

They chit-chatted with him for a moment, asking about the area, about the
past, and eventually left again. Old Eagle had enjoyed their company, he
said, before letting them out and closing the door behind them.

***

Walking slowly away from the cabin, Mulder and Scully kept their silence.
Scully kept glancing at him, aware that the old man had voiced what Mulder
actually thought. But something about it made him uncomfortable. Keeping up
with his pace, she thought of a million things to say and couldn't come up
with even one that sounded right.

"You know..." he began, but trailed off again when they reached the car. He
opened the passenger side door for her, a rare occurrence at best, but
didn't close it once she was seated.

"Do you think I'm crazy, Scully?" he asked.

Scully looked up at him, considering a teasing reply, but dropped it again
at the look in his eyes. He looked worried, a little uneasy. Instead, she
shook her head, a serious expression edged into her features.

"No, Mulder. I don't think you're crazy. Let's just go back to the motel and
go over the information we have gathered. Maybe something makes sense.
Okay?"

Looking down at her, he regarded her solemnly for a moment, then closed the
door and got in the car himself. Sliding the key into the ignition, he
hesitated before starting the engine and stared out through the windshield
for a second, regarding the landscape before them. It was beautiful, serene
and it spurred the imagination. Well, it spurred his, in any event.

"What if it really is Ann Markweather's ghost? How do we fight a ghost that
kills people?" he wanted to know, then sent her a halfhearted smile. "Not
that I would ever believe it to be a ghost," he added.

Scully rolled her eyes. "No, of course you wouldn't, Mulder," she scoffed
with a smile of her own. "Let's just go over the evidence we have collected.
Let's talk about this before we go rushing off to chase a ghost. Let's
consider the living before we blame the dead, okay?"

Gazing at her the way he did, she imagined she could almost see the hope in
his eyes. He nodded and started the engine, putting the car in gear.

"You're right, of course," he said, giving her another glance before driving
them back to the motel.

***

THE MOTEL

Scully was sitting cross-legged on the bed, reading one of the versions of
the Tale of Markweather, trying to make up her mind about what she thought
of it. Mulder in turn was lying on his back across the bed in a completely
relaxed fashion, head hanging over the edge, and stared at the wall across
from him.

"What do you think?" he asked her for the umpteenth time.

Scully pulled her reading glasses down to the tip of her nose and regarded
him over the rim of them for a second.

"Since when have you lost the ability to think for yourself?" she wanted to
know. "You've been asking me about my opinion every step of the way. Are you
feeling okay?"

Raising his head, he looked at her for a moment with a blank expression,
then let his head drop again.

"Scully, how am I to know what to do when everything I do is wrong?" he
asked her, not moving. His tone of voice was slightly terse. "First you want
me to ask your opinion and now that's wrong, too?"

She sighed. "That's not the point, Mulder. The point is that you're usually
spurting ideas like a fountain. I don't get this change in your behavior,"
she pointed out, her tone of voice a little edgy.

He sat up, easing into a stretch, while looking oddly at her. "I've had
plenty of ideas, Scully. And I've voiced them to. The truth of all this is
that this case has me bothered. There something I can't quite get a grip on.
And I know that this case is bothering you as much as it bothers me, right?"

She stared at him for a second, then nodded. "Yes, it does."

Mulder regarded her for a long moment, then he leaned toward her a bit.
"Scully, we've been partners for over five years here. You can read me like
an open book, but I hardly ever know what's going through your mind. I want
to get to know you better."

Eyeing him with a frown, Scully thought that she was too tired to deal with
this situation. And she had a strong feeling where it could be heading if
she didn't stop it right now.

"Mulder, you do know me better than you think," she assured him. "There are
so many times..." she tried to go on, then shook her head. "Never mind.
Apart from your theory that the ghost of Ann Markweather might be present to
distract the victims from their attacker, what else would it take to
distract someone from a deadly situation like that?"

Thinking it over, Mulder dropped back down on the bed and rolled over on his
stomach. "I don't see the pattern," he groaned after a while, letting his
head drop, burying his face in the bedspread.

"Let's go over it again. Six men and two girls have been killed. The only
thing they have in common is the way they have been murdered, right?" Scully
said, as exasperated by their lack of progress as he was.

"Yeah, and the location," Mulder mumbled into the fabric of the bedspread,
folding his hands over the back of his head, thereby pressing his face into
the matress.

Scully watched him for a moment, then sighed. "You'll suffocate if you keep
that up," she told him and with a shake of her head returned her attention
to the papers. "Okay, the way they were murdered and where they were
murdered is what they have in common. Except for the girls. They were killed
in the storage room. The men were killed in the barn itself. What does that
tell us?"

He raised his head, blinking at her. "Nothing," he told her and let his head
drop again. "I can't help thinking that we overlooked something out there,"
he added.

"Like what?" Scully wanted to know and suppressed a yawn.

"That's what I can't figure out," Mulder mumbled into the bedspread.
"There's something out there that eluded us?"

"What? Like a hidden clue or something?" she asked.

Mulder raised his head and looked over at her. "Not a hidden clue," he said,
snapping his fingers. "The killer might be hiding out there. In the storage
room. There was a kind of big shelve up under the ceiling. Probably more
storage space. And now that I think about it, I had the weird feeling that
someone was watching us when we were out there. What if he was there?"

A shiver ran up her spine, just thinking that this brutal murderer could
have been watching them, waiting for them to perhaps separate so he could
get to them. "Why would he be hiding out there, Mulder? That would be too
obvious," she said.

"Of course. That's what makes it plausible," he replied. "Sometimes you
can't see the forest for the trees, Scully," he added and got up. "Come on.
Let's get out there."

"Mulder," she nearly whined. "It's after midnight. It's dark out there."

Mulder stopped to look back at her, a smile on his lips. "Scully, you're not
going superstitious on me, are you?" he asked, teasing her.

Rolling her eyes, she reluctantly pushed off the bed. "All right," she
sighed and slipped into her shoes. "Did you remember to bring the
flashlights?"

"Of course I did. You know me. I'm always hoping for a midnight stroll with
my favorite girl," he said, grinning.

"What I don't understand is why the killer should be hiding out there,
Mulder? Why? I mean . . . I could understand it if he lived near there. But
there's nothing out there except for the old estate. And nobody's living
there. Not for six months, anyway."

Mulder stopped short with his hand on the doorknob, a piece of the puzzle
suddenly falling into place. And he almost cursed out loud for not having
seen the connection earlier. Turning back to his somewhat startled partner,
he stared at her. "That's it, Scully," he said.

"What's it?" she asked, too tired to follow his rampaging mind.

"The murders started right after old Mary Markweather died. What does that
tell you?" he wanted to know, giving her a meaningful look.

Scully wreaked her tired brain for the answer, briefly feeling as if she was
back in school, then suddenly her eyes widened. "Of course," she agreed.
"Let's go."

***

THE MARKWEATHER ESTATE

Back in the barn, their powerful flashlights lit up the area quite well.
Scully walked forward, one hand in her pocket, and she couldn't help the
feeling that this place was creepier than hell at night. Mulder had a goal
and he headed toward it, fully expecting Scully to be right on his heels. He
followed the corridor, causing Scully to find an empty barn when she turned
around after she had reached the tool rack.

Looking around the serene, quite barn, Scully frowned. "Where the hell is he
now?" she mumbled to herself. "Mulder?" she then called.

Mulder had returned to the storage room. Opening the door, he peeked into a
dark room beyond, shining his flashlight over the interior. He took a step
forward, intent on checking it out, when he heard Scully calling.

Turning his head to give her a shout back, his breath caught in his throat
when something glinted off the light of the flashlight. Something moved
toward him and he turned his head and took a step backward at the same time,
but wasn't fast enough to avoid the impact of the sharp, glinting thing
racing toward him in an arch.

The hook imbedded itself in his left shoulder right over the collar bone,
catching on it. Any air he would have needed to scream at the pain was
yanked out of him when his as yet unseen attacker used the hook to haul him
into the storage room, closing the door behind him and dropping him into
complete darkness when the flashlight fell from his hand, hit the floor and
died.

Scully cleared the corner to the corridor a split second after the door had
closed again. She frowned at the empty corridor, starting to get worried.

"Damn it, Mulder. We don't have time for games," she grumbled under her
breath, not at all happy about this. "MULDER?" she called again, wondering
where he had gone off to.

***

Mulder feared for his life. He was up on his knees, looking around the
completely dark room, trying to clear the images of the murders from his
mind. The pictures he had seen at the police station after their visit to
the church. This was where the last two murders had been committed. And the
killer was in here with him. Somewhere.

With his right hand wrapped around his left shoulder, he struggled to his
feet, cursing the darkness. He could hear sounds, but they might as well be
made by rats and other rodents.

Drawing in a deep breath, he was about to call out to Scully when he heard
the whistling of metal carving air. He staggered and stumbled backward, but
not fast enough. The tip of the hook caught and cut through the fabric of
his shirt and t-shirt underneath and he felt the cold steel tip grazing his
stomach all the way across. The killer obviously moved before he finished
the cut, because the tip of the hook dug deeper into him, ripping his left
side.

Mulder exhaled, again losing the air he would have needed to voice his pain
and stumbled backward, losing his footing in the process. He fell backward,
landing in old, musty-smelling grain, barely able to stay focused. The pain
seared through him when his left shoulder impacted with one of the grain
sacks. Something toppled over next to him, hitting the floor with a hollow
thud.

***

Scully, who had returned her attention to the first murder site, raised her
head from inspecting the tools and looked back over her shoulder, shining
the light over the interior of the barn. A sound somewhere in the barn had
demanded her attention and it again hit her that something wasn't quite
right.

"Mulder?" she called once more, turning around to face the rest of the barn,
the cone of the flashlight jumping erratically over the walls and the floor.

It was completely quiet inside and that made her very uneasy.

"MULDER?" she tried again, this time a little louder.

Trying not to let the atmosphere get to her, she walked back to the small
corridor. At the same moment she cleared the corner, the door to the storage
room opened again. Scully stopped short, expecting it to be Mulder, utterly
stunned to see a cloaked figure stepping out. The full-length black cloak
was definitely meant for a woman, but the body underneath was male. And the
hook in one gloved hand was unmistakably covered in fresh blood, which was
dripping off the tip.

Scully's eyes widened as the killer strode toward her, the slosh-slosh sound
of his footsteps indicating that he was wearing wellington boots underneath
the flowing fabric of the cloak. The hood was pulled up and into his face,
obscuring any trace of his identity, and he moved fast. Scully ripped her
gun out of her holster and started to back up, not paying attention to where
she was treading.

Stepping into a hole in the floor she had not previously noticed, she lost
her balance and fell backward, the gun dropping out of her hand and
skittering across the floor away from her in one direction while the
flashlight rolled off in another, illuminating the barn with an eerie
half-light. Her only option to get away from this crazed killer was to get
to the tools when he stepped out of the corridor, blocking her way to her
gun.

Struggling back to her feet, realizing she had twisted her ankle in the
process of stepping into the hole, she turned and limped as quickly as she
could move back to the rack of tools.

The approaching sound of the wellington boots put the fear of death in her
and somehow induced some kind of extra-sensory perception as well, because
she felt the incredible need to throw herself forward. She reacted a little
too late to that instinct and was grazed by the tip of the hook across her
back.

Letting out a yelp of pain, she hit the floor and rolled over onto her back
and surprised her attacker by bringing both feet up and hammering them into
his guts, driving him back several steps. That bought her enough time to get
back to her feet, reach the tool rack and rip the first thing she saw off
it.

The hayfork was as good a weapon as any and she stabbed out at him with it,
trying to keep off her injured foot as much as possible. While keeping him
at bay with the hayfork, she tried to get a look at his face under the hood,
but came to the conclusion that he was wearing a mask under it because she
couldn't make out anything. The sickening feeling of her blood oozing from
the cut on her back made her shiver.

"BACK OFF," she screamed at him. "I'm a Federal Agent."

Her words had no effect whatsoever on the man's intent to kill her. And
there was no doubt in her mind that this was what he intended to do. She
couldn't let him get to her or she would die.

That thought triggered another and she gasped in sheer fright when she
realized that Mulder had probably run into this man. The thought that he
might be lying somewhere, bleeding to death from a lethal wound, made her
swallow hard and fight to stay focused.

Stabbing out again a little more violently than she had intended, she
staggered one step forward, landing with her entire weight on her injured
foot and let out a yelp of pain.

That was all the killer needed. His fingers closed around the hilt of the
hayfork just above the tines and ripped it out of her grasp, tossing it
backward. It clattered to the floor near the corridor.

Scully almost toppled over with the strength he put into the action and to
compensate leaned backward, which proved to be just as disastrous because it
landed her hard on her back. Gasping at the pain and the impact of the fall,
she scrambled backward, but was stopped by the wall behind her. With wide
eyes and fear paralyzing her, she watched as he came closer, raising the
hook high up, ready to bring it down on her. To protect her face, she raised
her arms up, at the same time knowing how ludicrous it was as it would not
protect her from her attacker. It did, however, block her view of a flowing
white figure which had turned up in the center of the barn, hands raised and
outstretched. The figure lingered for a second, then faded away again.

***

Mulder heard Scully screaming at the killer and struggled to his feet again,
wincing at the pain he was in. And he was losing blood fast. Gasping, he
stumbled out into the corridor and, using the wall for support, he staggered
back toward the main area of the barn only to find that creep standing over
Scully, ready to kill her. Because of the killer's position, Mulder didn't
dare draw his gun and shoot. He was afraid he might hit Scully. And his hand
was very unsteady right now, too, so he didn't dare to take that risk.

The hayfork she had been defending herself with, landed at his feet when the
killer ripped it out of her hand and threw it away and he picked it up with
his right hand, grinding his teeth at the pain from his left shoulder and
his side.

Scully fell, hitting the floor, then scrambled backward, her eyes on the
killer. She raised her arms up to protect herself from the onslaught.

Just as she brought her arms up, a figure appeared between Mulder and the
killer, causing Mulder to stare in shock at the apparition. Only for a
moment, he saw the ghost of Ann Markweather, seemingly pleading silently
with her descendant before she faded away again. Mulder blinked, then
focused on Scully again. Pulling himself together, he closed the distance
between himself and the killer, raising the hayfork as he moved. His forward
momentum as much as his determination to save Scully was what gave him the
strength for the action.

***

The whistling sound of the hook racing through the air toward her was
interrupted before it reached her, and she heard a gagging sound, which made
her slowly lower her arms. Staring up at the man who had just been about to
kill her, she saw the tines of the hayfork sticking out through his chest.

"Leave her alone, you shit," she heard Mulder's angry and pained voice from
behind him.

The killer dropped to his knees and she got a rather unobstructed view of
Mulder standing behind him, still holding onto the hilt of the hayfork with
one hand, his left arm dangling uselessly at his side. His white shirt under
his suit jacket was spattered with blood from both his left shoulder and his
stomach.

Scully scurried out of the way when the killer keeled over, slipping off the
tines of the hayfork and hitting the floor. Getting up slowly, she kept her
eyes on the now motionless figure, her back against the wall, then she
pushed away and limped over to Mulder, who still had the hayfork in his
grip.

Trying to crumble up, he hissed at the pain from his wounds, his breathing
becoming more erratic by the moment. "Damn, that hurts," he gasped, cold
sweat covering his face, his skin pale.

Scully grabbed hold of him, keeping him from keeling over, and inspected his
injuries in the process. "You need to go to a hospital. Right now," she
said, fumbling in her pocket for her cell phone.

She had barely finished the sentence before their attacker rolled over.
Groaning, his movements decidedly unsteady, he rose back to his feet again.
The hook came up to shoulder-height and he stumbled toward them, ready to
kill them even though he had to be nearly dead himself.

Mulder's reaction was instantaneous. He ripped out his gun, which he had
been afraid to use before lest he hit Scully, and fired point blank, blowing
the man's brains to kingdom come. The man crashed back onto the ground, one
final shiver going through him before he stopped moving entirely.

Breathing through clenched teeth, Mulder kept an eye on him for a moment,
then finally lowered the gun again. "And this time stay down," he growled,
then finally gave up the fight and dropped to his knees with Scully still
holding onto him.

***

THE HOSPITAL

Police Chief Wills regarded the two Federal Agents with a little mirth. They
both looked worse for the wear and all Mulder could think of doing was
complain that his best suit had been ruined.

"You two must be the luckiest people I have ever met," Wills finally said,
shaking his head in disbelief.

"How's that, Chief Wills?" Scully asked.

She was standing up, leaning on a crutch to keep her weight off her severely
sprained ankle. The cut on her back had not been deep enough to warrant
stitches. She was bandaged, but it didn't really stop her from moving.

Wills smiled. "You catch this killer by using yourselves as bait. Do you
know how easily that could have gone wrong?" he asked, no small amount of
admiration in his voice. Mulder and Scully just glanced at each other. "Sad
thing about this guy. I've never seen him before. Didn't know who he was.
Until we just yesterday established his true identity."

Mulder, who had spent two days in one of the beds of the local hospital,
gave him a curious glance, believing he knew the answer to his own question.
"So, who was he?" he wanted to know.

"The man who attacked you was obviously Ann Markweather's grandson," Wills
said, sounding a little sad. "Apparently old Mary kept her son's existence a
secret. He has been living here all his life and nobody knew who he was. And
I thought that there were no Markweather's left."

Glancing over at Scully, Mulder almost smirked. He had been right once
again. Returning his attention to Wills, he shifted his position a little.
"Her grandson, huh? Well, that explains the murders to a certain extent,
doesn't it? At least why they started up when they did."

"I guess so. The poor bastard was obviously mad, though. But, then again,
the Markweather's have never been known for their sound state of mind,"
Wills replied. "It's always something that we caught the killer, though."

"Yeah, you're right about that. It's a sad story, though," Mulder commented
and gingerly got to his feet.

His left arm was in a sling to prevent his damaged left shoulder from moving
too much. The wound on his right side had been stitched back together and
from what the doctors could see, he had been extremely lucky with that one.

A superficial cut ran from the left side of his stomach to the right, where
it ended in a rip. If the killer had put a little more pressure on the
attack, Mulder would have been forced to pick his intestines off the floor.
That was the way one of the doctors had put it, leaving Mulder pale and
slightly nauseous.

Wills nodded at Mulder's comment. "Yeah, it is," he said with a shrug, not
implying indifference but rather the helplessness one can feel when faced
with a situation which is not easily handled.

Mulder eyed him for a moment, one hand on the bed to support himself. "Did
you ever figure out why these eight were killed?" he wanted to know.

Frowning a little, Wills shrugged again. "I'm not certain, Agent Mulder. As
far as we can tell, neither of them had anything to do with the
Markweathers. Two of the men were even from out of town. In general it may
have had something to do with how many people Ann Markweather killed in the
throes of her madness. According to the books, they found ten bodies after
she had completed her gruesome work. But, to be quite honest, I doubt that's
entirely correct. If there had been ten people present in the house, they
would have found a way to restrain her before she managed to kill them all."
He fell silent for a moment, thinking about it. Then he slowly shook his
head. "I just don't know. Who knows what makes people like that kill,
anyway, right? It doesn't seem like they have a choice in the first place."

"Yeah, you could have a point there," Mulder mused, a thoughtful frown
furrowing his brow. "Anyway, if you ever do come up with a solution to that
one, I'd love to hear about it," he added.

"I'll keep that in mind, Agent Mulder," Wills promised with a smile. "Well,
the car that will take you to the airport will be here in a bit. I've got a
lot of paperwork to deal with, so if you'll excuse me? I hope you got a
little something out of this stay apart from your injuries."

Mulder and Scully glanced at each other and then both grinned. Neither was
in the position to laugh right now, so they didn't, although Will's
statement provoked a rather forceful elation in both of them.

Wills took his leave of them and once he was gone, Mulder turned around to
face Scully. "I was right," he said.

Scully smiled. "Yes, you were. Again. I would never have guessed that it was
her grandson. Ann Markweather's grandson," she said with a certain amount of
wonder. "And her daughter lived to raise a child of her own, who in turn
could avenge his grandparents' death. In more ways than one."

Mulder's expression should have warned her, but he still managed to catch
her by surprise. "If he did it on his own," he said.

Scully gave him a sharp look, trying to figure out where he was going with
that. "What do you mean?" she asked, thinking she should know better than to
ask for an explanation.

"I saw her," he finally said, disclosing to her what he had seen immediately
prior to managing to take out the nameless Markweather before he could kill
Scully.

Staring at him for a moment, Scully tried to refrain from laughing out loud.
She knew where he was going with this. "What are you talking about, Mulder?"
she demanded with a weak smile. "Ann Markweather is dead. She was hanged by
the neck and even if she were alive, she would be . . . almost one hundred.
Her family had her put away because she was mad, Mulder."

He nodded. "Yeah, I know. But I saw her, Scully. For a brief moment. What if
Ann couldn't leave this world, knowing that her daughter and her grandson
both grew up among the people who had killed Joshua and that they were both
mad? What if she in some way was trying to prevent her crazy grandson from
killing these people?"

"But, she didn't, Mulder. Furthermore, if she really is out there, it seems
to me as if she may have spurred him on rather than trying to prevent the
murders. And what were these people doing out there in the first place? As
Wills said, they had nothing at all to do with the estate. And it was sheer
luck that they were found in the first place. It was only after number six
was killed and a kid playing in the barn accidentally stumbled across the
corpses that the police even found out what was going on. These are missing
persons cases, which had turned into murder cases."

"I don't think that Ann Markweather was quite done with this world when she
died and her daughter may not have been able to do her mother's bidding.
Maybe she somehow enticed her grandson to do the killing for her," Mulder
suggested.

Pursing her lips, Scully frowned a little at that one. "Mulder, this man
killed eight people who had no relation to the Markweathers whatsoever. How
they came to be there and why he chose to kill them and not others is a
mystery. Now, what you're suggesting is that Ann Markweather's ghost may
have driven both her daughter and her grandson to kill?" she wanted to know.

Mulder grinned broadly at her. "That's what I'm saying," he agreed. "Are we
on the same wave length or what?" he added.

For a moment, Scully eyed him thoughtfully. "Mulder, sometimes I really
worry about you," she said. "Look, I don't know about you, but I've had
enough of the country side for good long while. This case is solved, the
murderer has been found and is dead and that's it. Case closed."

Mulder smiled, nodding vaguely. "Sure. But I think Ann Markweather is still
haunting the premises, Scully, and if she is, this case is far from over.
Because . . ." he tried, but she cut him off.

"Enough already," she said, smiling. "This case is closed, Mulder. There's
nothing more we can do here. The rest is up to the local law enforcement."
Wrapping an arm under Mulder's right arm, she looked up at him. "Let's go
home," she insisted. "I really have had enough of the country side for a
while."

Sighing deeply, Mulder capitulated. He was too wasted and too much in pain
to really dig further into this. Maybe, some day, he would come back here
and try to solve this mystery. Right now, though, going home sounded really
good to him.

"Yeah, me too," he finally agreed.

***

Once in the police cruiser, which would take them to the airport, Mulder
glanced at Scully and grinned again. "Well, Scully, at least we solved the
logical part of this one," he said to her.

"Yeah. But, you know what?" she replied, staring out at the landscape
slipping by them.

"What?" he wanted to know.

"I could have gone for an unsolvable case this time around if it had avoided
our injuries," she said, turned her head and smiled at him.

Mulder merely chuckled, then winced at the stabbing pain from his side.
"Stop making me laugh. It hurts too much," he whined.

Reaching out, she slipped a hand behind his neck, digging her fingers into
his hair. "I'm just so glad you're alive," she whispered and pecked him on
the cheek.

They drove in silence for a moment, then Mulder turned his head to face her
once more. "It could be that the history books were right," he said, voicing
a thought which he had toyed with since Wills had left.

"Pardon?" Scully asked, a little confused.

"Maybe Ann Markweather did kill ten people. It could be that it's right, you
know. And if she enticed her grandson to do those murders, she's still
missing two," he explained.

Scully stared at him for a moment, her expression stuck between surprise and
annoyance, then she sighed. "Let it go, Mulder. We solved the case. The
murderer is dead. Whatever his reasons for killing were, they've gone to his
grave with him." She paused, glancing past him at the scenic view, then
refocused on his face. "And even if you're right, Mulder, Ann Markweather
doesn't have anybody else she can force to do her bidding. There are no
Markweathers left now."

"Yeah, but . . ." he tried, but she cut him off.

"Let it go, Mulder," she repeated.

Somehow, she was afraid of this, of thinking that they had been meant to
complete a circle. By escaping, it was possible that they had broken a
circle which might have put Ann Markweather's unsettled spirit to rest.
Shaking her head at her own thoughts, she glanced back at Mulder, who was
lost in thought, staring down at his left hand with a frown.

"It's over, one way or another. Besides, there isn't much we can do about
it, even if you are right," she added, feeling she had to say it.

Mulder glanced at her for a moment, then nodded and let his eyes wander back
to his hand. "Yeah, I guess," he replied and fell silent again.

***

THE MARKWEATHER ESTATE

In the forest beyond the Markweather estate, the sun was setting in a
dazzling display of orange fading to black. A few birds still chirped in the
gloom and sounds faded as the twilight hour approached. In the final rays of
the setting sun, a lonely figure moved among the tall grass near the house.
A young woman in a flowing gown wandered toward the forest. Her alabaster
skin almost glowed and her golden blond hair moved in the wind. And where
she trod, not a single straw of grass was bent. Her voice, a bitter-sweet
melody of eternal pain, sounded far away while she called, "Joshua!"

THE END