INT. CAR
Mulder and Scully.
MULDER
Well, Scully, what do you think of that?
SCULLY
I think I'm ready to upgrade my diagnosis from delusional to full-blown paranoia.
MULDER
I'm not sure I agree, Scully. Sure, Ricky's story is out there, but the basic idea that things aren't what they seem is pretty much the rationale followed by all serious investigators--be they scientists, philosophers, even FBI agents. The only thing that distinguishes Ricky's perspective is his conviction that there's some sort of design or intent behind the facts as we know them. But it's all the same thing--it's just a matter of scale.
By the look on her face, it is clear Scully is unconvinced.
MULDER
Look, all we know, all we can ever know, is based on what we can see, what we can touch, right? But it's not real. Our senses simply collect this information and then our brains compose it into some mock-up of reality.
SCULLY
Mulder, is this little speech going somewhere?
MULDER
What if you could know things as they really are? Not just as they're processed by our senses and assembled in our brains, but as the world really looks? I think Ricky Smith, when he came to this town, got a look at things as they really are. And I don't think he liked what he saw.
SCULLY
Then why doesn't he just leave? You don't really believe he likes it there in that house, do you?
MULDER
I don't think he has a choice. The filth. The potted meat. I think something's been keeping him there. Feeding him. Keeping him alive. Why, I don't know.
EXT. OASIS MOTEL - NIGHT
The agents' car pulls into the parking lot.
INT. SCULLY'S MOTEL ROOM
From the amount of steam in the room and the sound of RUNNING WATER, it looks like Scully is finally taking that shower. The phone starts to RING; it is an ancient Princess model with a ring like a fire alarm. At the third RING there is a muffled CURSE from inside the bathroom. The WATER stops.
CUT TO:
INT. MULDER'S MOTEL ROOM
Mulder is lounging on the bed flipping through TV channels. Through the thin wall, the RING of Scully's phone can be barely heard. Mulder doesn't seem to notice.
Click: An old black-and-white cartoon.
Click: Some artsy-looking thing, shot in negative exposure and accompanied by AIRY SYNTH MUSIC.
Click: STATIC, with a hint of a human image behind.
Click: Another old cartoon.
CUT TO:
INT. SCULLY'S MOTEL ROOM
After two more RINGS, Scully comes out of the bathroom wrapped in a long bathrobe, her hair in a towel.
Scully's POV: She is trying to get to the phone, but the mist seems to have thickened, and she can't quite seem to cover the eight or so steps to the RINGING telephone. She keeps getting set back.
Suddenly she finds herself with the telephone in her hand, held up to her ear. She looks surprised.
SCULLY
Hello?
There are vague NOISES on the other end of the line, but no reply.
SCULLY
Hello?
The NOISES seem to coalesce into something like a human VOICE, or SEVERAL VOICES not quite in synch. They are speaking in what might be another language, not making any sense. The speech is full of hisses and grunts. Still, Scully seems mesmerized for a moment. Then the spell breaks, and she SLAMS the phone down.
CUT TO:
INT. MULDER'S MOTEL ROOM
Mulder is still surfing through TV channels.
Click: An infomercial for a set of encyclopedias called "The Lure of the Unknown."
VOICEOVER (on the television)
Do you really want to know the truth about Bigfoot? The Lost City of Atlantis? Flying saucers? "The Lure of the Unknown" has the answers.
On the SCREEN, the picture changes: A thin BLOND MAN appears. The poor reception makes him look gruesome, cadaverous. He looks right into the camera, almost looking through the television.
BLOND MAN
(in the same voice)
We only have one question: Do you really want to know?
The man on screen holds his pose uncomfortably long. Mulder finally changes the channel. Click: the infomercial again.
BLOND MAN
Do you really want to know?
Click: the infomercial.
BLOND MAN
Do you really want to know?
Mulder scans through the channels faster. Click.
BLOND MAN
--really want to know?
Click.
BLOND MAN
--want to know?
Click.
BLOND MAN
--to know?
Click.
BLOND MAN
--know?
Click.
BLOND MAN
--know?
Click: The thin man is replaced by a silent and grainy video of a man and a woman talking. The angle is odd, though, shot from about waist level and looking almost straight up. Disoriented by the odd point of view, it takes Mulder a moment to recognize the two people: himself and Scully, talking in the autopsy room earlier that day, as seen through Larry Johnson's dead eyes.
CUT TO:
INT. SCULLY'S MOTEL ROOM
Scully, in sweats, opens the door to her room. Mulder is outside with his overnight bag.
MULDER
Call me paranoid, but I think it might be a good idea if we didn't stay in separate rooms tonight.
SCULLY
Come on in.
Mulder steps in.
SCULLY
I'll warn you, the TV doesn't work.
MULDER
No problem.
The door SLAMS shut.
INT. SCULLY'S MOTEL ROOM, LATER
The two agents are asleep, Scully in her bed, Mulder in a chair. They are restless--having bad dreams.
CUT TO:
INT. ELEVATOR
Mulder and Scully stand together in an elevator, not unlike the one in FBI headquarters. Their stance is awkward and oddly posed: Mulder is smiling, Scully looks annoyed. Treacly elevator MUZAK is playing a familiar but unidentifiable tune.
CUT TO:
INT. MOTEL ROOM
CLOSE UP on Mulder. He is twitching slightly.
CUT TO:
INT. ELEVATOR
The elevator stops. The doors open a few inches. We get a glimpse of faintly ROARING blackness on the other side. The treacly music has been replaced by a CALLIOPE playing the same elusively familiar tune.
CUT TO:
INT. MOTEL ROOM
CLOSE UP on Scully. Her face is twisted into a look of pain.
CUT TO:
INT. ELEVATOR
The doors open a little more, revealing more of the abysmal blackness. In the elevator, the agents look at each other apprehensively. A few more inches. The faint roar has become a HOWL. The agents make a move as if to step through the doors...
CUT TO:
INT. MOTEL ROOM
The HOWL in the dream becomes the cacophonous RINGING of the phone. Both agents wake with a start and sit bolt upright. The phone RINGS again. Mulder picks it up.
MULDER
Hello?
(no reply)
Hello?
VOICE ON PHONE
Hello? Hello?
Mulder turns his eyes to Scully. The VOICE on the phone is hers, though nearly inaudible behind vague background NOISES. Then the voice changes slightly--a near-perfect imitation of Scully's, but muffled, as though spoken through clenched teeth.
VOICE ON PHONE
Three o'clock. Showtime.
Mulder and Scully look at the motel clock: its green luminescent hands point to three a.m.
VOICE ON PHONE
You don't want to miss it.
The voice fades into HISSES and POPS.
FADE OUT
END OF ACT THREE
ACT FOU
R
FADE IN:
INT. SCULLY'S MOTEL ROOM
Mulder is calling Ricky on Scully's cell phone. After a number of RINGS, the line is PICKED UP by an answering machine. The VOICE on the recording is not Ricky's.
ANSWERING MACHINE (ON THE PHONE)
Hi, kids! We've all gone to the magic show! See you there!
The machine hangs up. Scully comes in, holding a manila envelope.
MULDER
(a bit dazed)
I got his machine.
SCULLY
His machine? Mulder, he didn't even have a phone--how could you get a machine?
MULDER
Any luck with the manager?
SCULLY
He wasn't there.
MULDER
So much for always being at the disposal of his guests.
SCULLY
I found this, though.
She hands Mulder the manila envelope. It is labeled "FOR THE NEWLYWEDS." Mulder removes its contents: a photograph of Mulder and Scully posed together--Mulder smiling, Scully looking annoyed. It is identical to their positions in the elevator dream.
MULDER
Scully, I had this dream--
SCULLY
(interrupting)
Did it have an elevator in it?
Mulder is speechless. From outside, strains of CALLIOPE MUSIC can be heard. The song is familiar, but strangely elusive. The agents step out of the room.
EXT. OASIS MOTEL - NIGHT
The town of Crampton is all but dead but for one building: a few blocks down, the agents can see the Masonic Hall, still every inch a ruin from the outside, is brightly lit within. It is from here that the CALLIOPE MUSIC comes.
INT. MASONIC HALL
Mulder and Scully burst into the hall to find the Spectacular Display of Illusion and Ventriloquism has started without them. No longer a filthy ruin, the inside of the hall seems completely restored, with intricate ceilingwork, thick-glassed lamps, and a rich, ornate curtain.
The audience is a collection of New York theater first- nighters, carney types, show-business types--all kinds of stereotyped and fraudulent beings. Grinning clowns are working the crowd doing petty sleight-of-hand tricks. The unctuous CALLIOPE MUSIC plays just a little too loud. On stage, a VENTRILOQUIST is performing in an outrageously smarmy manner. On his knee is "Laffo."
Mulder and Scully lurk at the back of the audience. The magician-ventriloquist ends his bit with a shrill TITTER from "Laffo." An unseen EMCEE's VOICE fills the room.
EMCEE (O.S.)
And now, ladies and gentlemen, the moment you've all been waiting for, the centerpiece of our display: The Metamorphosis!
The crowd APPLAUDS. The calliope music disappears and is replaced by treacly MUZAK cranked to distorting. The KID from the Fix-It shop rolls a platform onto the stage: on it, a human FIGURE is tied to a frame, its arms and legs outspread, its head constrained by a band tied around it and a taut cord leading to the top of the frame. The figure is dressed from head to toe in a skeleton suit with an X taped across its mouth.
MULDER
Jesus, Scully, I think that's Ricky!
Mulder and Scully try to move toward the stage but cannot seem to get any closer--for every person they nudge aside, two seem to move to block their path. They draw their sidearms.
SCULLY
FBI!
MULDER
Federal agents! Get out of the way!
Strangely, their shouts cannot seem to draw the audience's attention away from "The Metamorphosis," which the trapped agents can only watch in glimpses from between shifting bodies...
On stage, a tuxedoed MAGICIAN with handsome yet forgettable features is rolling the platform from one side of the stage to the other and then twirling it around. Finally it is brought to a dead stop. With a stagey flourish the stage magician tears away the X across the figure's mouth. The skeleton figure emits a continuous tormented SCREAM.
In one swift movement the illusionist tears away the skeleton suit from the neck downward, revealing nothing but empty air underneath. The crowd OOHS, as the cowled head keeps SCREAMING. The illusionist then tears away the hood of the skeleton suit, leaving only a skull dangling from a cord; however, the SCREAMING continues for a few moments before fading into the ROAR of the jubilant crowd.
The illusionist takes his bows, the music goes TA-DA!, and within moments the hall has emptied.
INT. MASONIC HALL, ON THE STAGE
The curtains draw closed and the house lights go dim just as the agents finally reach the stage. Their guns still drawn, they part the curtain slightly.
On the other side: ROARING blackness.
Mulder and Scully look at each other apprehensively.
SCULLY
Ricky said that he thought he could have turned back here. That he still had a choice.
MULDER
I'm not sure we do.
Mulder steps through the curtain into the ROARING blackness. Scully is right behind him.
CUT TO:
INT. FBI HEADQUARTERS
Mulder and Scully step out of the elevator into chaos: FBI agents and EMS personnel are swarming around the office. Mulder and Scully look a bit unsteady, as if stepping off a pitching boat onto dry land.
MULDER
(to the nearest agents)
What's going on?
AGENT
You don't want to know.
ANOTHER AGENT
It was Johnson.
MULDER
Larry Johnson?
EMS personnel wheel a gurney past them--on it, Larry Johnson. He is straining at the leather straps that bind him to the stretcher.
AGENT
I think he had a breakdown or something. Just started screaming. I've never heard anybody scream like that before.
Mulder walks over to Johnson's cubicle. The chair is knocked over, papers and office supplies are scattered all over the floor. On the desk is a sheaf of black-and-white photographs. Mulder picks these up for a better look. Obviously overexposed, they depict only yawning blackness.
SCULLY (O.S.)
Did you know him, Mulder?
Looking at the photos, Mulder seems to be trying to remember something.
SCULLY (O.S.)
Mulder?
Whatever it was he was trying to remember, Mulder finally lets it go. He drops the photographs back onto Johnson's desk. They land on a manila envelope; the return address, written in neat, ancient letters: "Crampton, OH."
MULDER
I worked a case with him and his partner. It was a long time ago.
He turns and walks away from the scene.
MULDER
So, seriously, you never saw The Manchurian Candidate?
SCULLY
(following)
Nope.
MULDER
Never?
SCULLY
What did I just say?
MULDER
Jeez, Scully, it's only like the best conspiracy movie of all time.
SCULLY
I thought that was JFK--which you never saw.
MULDER
Yeah, but I know how it ends.
FADE TO BLACK.
Crampton Page 11
