She felt a spasm in his chest, as if the request hurt him somehow. But he said, “Sure. Go get it. It’s on the coffee table.”
She went inside and brought out the old leather-bound copy of Moby-Dick. Dad put on his reading glasses and opened the book to the place where they’d left off long ago. It wasn’t their first time through the book. They knew the story by heart, but that wasn’t why they came back to it. It was the thing that connected them, and Dana sometimes wondered if the book was as much a lifeline to him as it was to her. There was a sadness in her father she’d never understood, and she suspected that his coldness was as much a defense mechanism as it was part of his being a professional military man. She knew for sure that a heart beat inside his bearlike chest.
She wanted to find some way to truly unlock him. She wondered if he was different at sea. She liked to think that he yearned to be riding the waves, chasing whales, navigating by the stars—and that his gruffness was from being trapped on land, and not from being trapped on dry land with his family. But she never asked, because she might find out the truth, and that would hurt too much, because sometimes the truth doesn’t set you free.
They read the book and the crickets sang to each other in the grass, and for a while, at least, the shadows kept their distance.
CHAPTER 57
Craiger, Maryland
11:03 P.M.
The angel thought about Agent Gerlach and his masters in the Syndicate. He thought about what they wanted of him, what they needed from him, and what they thought about him.
They thought he was a madman, that he was out of control, that he was becoming a danger to their plans. They were working to save the world. Maybe some of them actually believed it. Gerlach seemed to. But they were going about it the wrong way. The Craiger Initiative was good, and it might even give them the weapon they needed.
Maybe, but the angel did not believe it. Oh, he believed that what he was doing for them would create weapons, even incredibly powerful ones, but the enemy they all fought was so very much more powerful. No army of psychic children could hope to oppose it. No, the angel believed that the Syndicate was going to lose the whole planet.
He, on the other hand, would not. He had a different idea about how to fight the future.
With the grigori and their children, the nephilim.
How could any fleet of invaders hope to win against a host of angels and giants?
He had tried to explain this to Gerlach, but the conversation had gone nowhere. The angel could see the doubt, the mockery, the fear in the agent’s eyes.
The angel pitied him.
He pitied everyone who failed in his or her faith. When the painting on the wall was complete, when it changed from blood and hair and grease and sweat into a portal, then the faithless would burn in the same fires as the enemies of this world.
CHAPTER 58
Scully Residence
11:43 P.M.
The house was still and even the crickets outside had fallen silent.
Sleep seemed impossible. Dana lit the special incense Sunlight had given her and tried meditating, but failed. She tried yoga, and failed at that, too. Finally she crawled into bed and lay staring at the ceiling, trying to force her brain to shift from emotional reaction to logical analysis. There was a line from a Sherlock Holmes story she’d read once that really seemed to fit, and she spoke it aloud so that the sound of the words would reinforce the truth of the observation. It was from the short novel The Sign of Four.
“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
Absolutely, she thought. But what is the truth?
She tried to recatalog the facts as she knew them, updating a mental file as detached and precise as Uncle Frank’s case files.
Point One: There have been six deaths of teenagers in Craiger, Maryland.
Point Two: All those deaths appear to have happened because of car accidents.
Point Three: None of the victims had been drinking.
Point Four: Five of them had something in their blood called 5-HT2A receptor agonists. Since Uncle Frank did not yet have the toxicology results for Todd Harris, Dana didn’t know if he also had that stuff in his blood, but it was likely.
Point Five: She was having dreams about the death of Maisie Bell. Was she really some kind of psychic sensitive as Corinda and Sunlight seemed to think she was? If so, why her?
Point Six: Corinda and Sunlight both told her that her “gifts” could be fine-tuned. Was that true? If so, was that a good thing for her or bad? Could she live with even more visions in her head? She doubted it. Even the thought made her want to throw up.
Point Seven: Sunlight and Corinda both said that the killer was somehow projecting an image of a dark angel to hide his true identity. So who was he?
Point Eight: Maisie said something about a Red Age. What was a Red Age? Was she mixed up in a religious cult? The wounds seemed to shout that as the truth, but how to find out for sure?
Point Nine: The angel was male.
Dana thought about that. He was male in her dreams, and he was male in the parts of the visions viewed by Corinda and Sunlight. Did that mean he actually was male? Or was she imposing that on the angel because of the degree of violence? Could a woman have committed those crimes? Maybe. A strong woman. Alternately, could the angel be a “them” rather than a “him”? Could there be more than one person doing this? Not separately, but working together. It wasn’t out of the question. After all, she saw a documentary once about two guys who worked together to commit murders back in the 1920s. Leopold and Loeb. That same special talked about other pairs of murderers. She fished for the names. Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, the child murderers from England in the sixties. And Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, who went on a killing spree in the fifties. So, sure, it was possible. Did she believe that was what was happening here? Maybe, but the argument was one of pure practicality. Arranging the car crashes and making sure the victims’ injuries were in keeping with an accident seemed like something that would take planning, muscle, and effort. Could a single person keep doing that? Especially in such a short period of time? Dana found it hard to believe.
Point Ten: Corinda said that the killer was someone Dana knew. What did that mean? Was it someone she’d met casually? Someone at school? Someone from another place here in Craiger? Since moving here, she’d met a lot of people, from the mailman to the teachers at school, but did any of them strike her as being a murderous psychopath?
No, she thought. Not one.
She continued listing points, but soon she found that they were becoming thin, with her forcing logic on pure supposition—something her dad once said was a poor way to manage strategic thinking.
So, without more facts to consider, she asked herself questions, even though she knew they did not yet have answers. Asking the questions was important, though; her gut told her as much. Those questions would give her a direction, give her focus.
Question: Why would someone want to kill them?
Question: What did the victims have in common besides being teenagers here in Craiger?
Question: Was this all drug-related?
Question: If this was a cult, was it a religious cult? (Was the Red Age some kind of religious reference? To the crucifix or to the blood of martyrs?)
Question: Who was the angel?
The incense was every bit as calming as Sunlight had promised. Soothing, making her feel safe and drowsy. She hovered on the edge of sleep.
Question: Am I just losing my mind?
“No,” she said, saying it out loud so that it, too, would be real. “No. I’m not imagining it. This is happening. This is real. The truth is out there. I’m going to find it.”
She believed that, but at the same time she knew she had to make a decision about how to react, and about what to believe. The psychic stuff was scary and weird and confusing, and maybe it was true. She certainly couldn’t dismiss it out of ha
nd, because too many of the things from her visions showed up in the case files. So, okay, ESP was real.
“So what?” she asked the night. There was nowhere to go with that stuff. She could not prove anything that she’d seen.
Dana thought about that for a long time. She did not want to be the girl who had visions. No way. Not now and not ever. Nothing that was as scary and disturbing as those visions could be the right thing for her.
Which left what other option?
Ethan. He was all about the science. Collecting hard evidence and analyzing it. Was that her path?
Maybe. But not exactly.
It was closer, though. It felt like a safer place to stand.
Much safer.
She got up and crept out into the hall, listened for noise, heard nothing. Then she lifted the receiver of the phone and dialed Ethan’s number. It rang eight times before he answered, and it was clear she had pulled him out of deep sleep.
“Hello…?”
“It’s me,” she said, keeping her voice low.
“Are you all right?” he asked, the sleep vanishing from his tone.
“Yes,” she said quickly. “Listen … I want to go see Sunlight and Corinda sometime tomorrow. Will you come with me?”
He took a long time to answer. “Is that what you really want?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Then, okay.”
“Thank you,” said Dana. “Really … thank you. I know you don’t think it will help, but I really want you there. Is it too much to ask?”
“Dana … look, you can ask for anything and I’ll do it.” He paused. “And I hope that doesn’t sound corny.”
“No,” said Dana. “It’s nice.”
The house creaked as if shifting in its sleep.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said.
“Okay,” said Ethan. “Sweet dreams.”
It was the sweetest thing he could have said, and she clung to it like a talisman. She took those words to bed with her and lay with them, smiling, there on the edge of sleep. Then she put her hands together and said a quick prayer. She asked for guidance. She asked for protection. As her eyes drifted shut, Dana fell off the edge down into the well of sleep.
CHAPTER 59
The Observation Room
11:57 P.M.
“… The truth is out there. I’m going to find it.”
Agent Gerlach sat beside Danny, watching the Scully girl on the TV monitor. Gerlach reached out and touched the rewind button, stopped it, and then pressed play.
“The truth is out there. I’m going to find it.”
Danny cut him a nervous look.
“Yeah,” said Gerlach, replying to the unspoken question. “That’s going to be a problem for us.”
CHAPTER 60
Scully Residence
April 5, 1:22 A.M.
Dana felt a presence in the room with her, and it pulled her up out of a deep dream in which she stood on a tiny island with a man she did not know, surrounded by mist and darkness. Somewhere out in the darkness, something big and heavy and wrong moved through the waters.
And then she was awake, sitting up all at once, jolted back to the world and the present and the darkness of her room. Lightning flashed outside and revealed a figure standing at the foot of her bed. The shadows of the tree branches outside painted the figure with stark, jagged lines of black and white. Dana recoiled, a scream rising to her lips, but she caught it, held it, kept it inside.
When she spoke, it was a whisper.
“Gran…?”
Her grandmother stood there, dressed in a pale nightdress, gray hair hanging loose, eyes completely black in the bad light.
“The angel is looking for you,” said Gran.
“What?”
“He has all his thoughts bent on you,” said Gran. “His mind is a furnace.”
“Gran, how do you know about that?”
Lightning flashed again and again, but there was no accompanying thunder. The world was oddly silent.
“Listen to me, girl,” said Gran. “There are webs and webs, layers upon layers, and you need to be very careful. Keep looking, but know that the truth is all around you, too. It is there to be seen, to be known. It’s not enough to open your eyes.… You have to turn and look around. The truth might be standing right behind you.”
“I don’t understand.”
There was another flash of lightning, and this time there was a monstrous explosion of thunder that shook the world and made Dana cry out. It was all so loud, so bright, that she turned away from it, covering her head with her arms.
When she looked again, Gran was gone. The room was empty, the door closed and locked. Outside, the storm clouds had thinned and parted, and the moon shone clear and bright through the April trees.
CHAPTER 61
The Observation Room
2:08 A.M.
“Agent Gerlach!” cried Danny, and the fear in the young man’s voice snapped Gerlach from a doze. He jerked awake and launched himself from where he’d been sprawled on a threadbare couch.
“What’s wrong?”
“I think we’re in trouble.” Danny pointed to one of the screens.
On screen number eleven, a thin olive-skinned girl was thrashing in her bed with such intense ferocity that they could hear mattress springs snapping like loud guitar strings. The whole bed was bouncing, lifting the front and back legs as if strong hands were raising and smashing them back down. Gerlach could hear the pounding of fists and the desperate cries of the girl’s parents, but the dresser slid across the floor and wedged itself immovably against the door. The bedside lamp flashed on and off like a strobe, and steam rose from the screaming girl’s open mouth.
“What’s he doing to her?” demanded Danny.
Gerlach wiped cold sweat from his face. “Turning up the amplification,” he said, echoing the order from the First Elder.
“He’s going to kill her.”
Gerlach said nothing.
Suddenly the girl was flung from the bed with incredible force. She crashed to the floor, twisting like a worm on summer-hot pavement. Then she shot to her feet, crouched for a moment like a wild animal, eyes mad and feral as she looked around, clearly seeing nothing she recognized. Then, with a howl like a wild dog, the girl ran toward the window, crashed through the curtains and glass, and vanished into the night. After an appalling moment, there was the soft, awful noise of her body striking the unforgiving lawn two stories below.
“Ah … geez,” said Danny. “She looks pretty bad.”
Gerlach cursed under his breath and then reached for the phone, dialed a number, and waited through three rings. “Sheriff,” he said, “you’re going to get an emergency call in a few minutes. No … no one’s dead this time. This is going to be a couple of broken bones and maybe some head trauma. Maria Sanchez, age eleven. She’ll be irrational. Make sure you put a deputy on her who knows how to keep his mouth shut. A specialist will be at the hospital within four hours. He’ll have all the right papers. I need you to make sure he is afforded every courtesy and that no one gets in his way. He’ll oversee her treatment. That’s right. Thank you, Sheriff. As always, you can expect an envelope in the glove compartment of your car.”
Gerlach set the phone down and let out a long, tired sigh. Danny gave him a hopeful smile.
“Hey,” said the younger agent, “at least he didn’t kill this one.”
Gerlach unwrapped a stick of gum. “Day’s young, kid.”
CHAPTER 62
Francis Scott Key Regional High School
12:18 P.M.
School the next day was a drudge and a blur. Dana was sure she did not actually learn anything. She was called to the nurse between classes for her test. The nurse’s face was wooden as she tied a rubber tourniquet around Dana’s arm, swabbed, with alcohol, jabbed, with a needle, and drew off a glass vial of blood. Five volunteer nurses worked with her. Six students at a time. Rinse, repeat. And all of it in a ghastly silence. Afte
rward, she looked for Ethan and finally found him in the lunchroom with the rest of the science club. Dana and Ethan told the others about the latest developments.
When they were done, Tisa Johnson swiveled her praying mantis head from Ethan to Dana and back again as she said, “I’ve been reading about ESP. The Soviets have been doing a lot of research about psychic spies. My aunt Sallie works for our government. Something in the Department of Defense, and we’re going over to her house on Saturday. I’m going to see what she knows.”
The others said they were also looking into it, but none of them had anything specific.
“We’re going to see the psychics at Beyond Beyond,” said Ethan.
Tisa nodded, but Sylvia rolled her eyes. “There’s real research and then there’s airy-fairy stuff.”
“It’s what we have,” said Ethan. “Besides, Dana says they’re pretty sharp.”
“Worth a try,” said Jerry, blinking his big frog eyes.
So Dana and Ethan found themselves at her usual table at Beyond Beyond half an hour after their last class. Sunlight sat across from them, stirring his tea, eyes hooded, lips pursed, saying nothing. He had listened to everything Dana and Ethan had to say, occasionally interrupting to ask clarifying questions, and then lapsed into a long and thoughtful silence.
Ethan was like a stone statue next to her, but Dana couldn’t help but fidget. Around them, the usual hustle and bustle of the store continued, as if the world hadn’t turned darker and stranger. Behind the partition, Dana could hear Corinda ringing up café customers, chatting with them, occasionally laughing. As if life were normal. Dana reached under the table and took Ethan’s hand, squeezing it, giving comfort as well as holding on for dear life.
Finally Sunlight leaned back and folded his hands on the tabletop. “This is bad.”
Dana and Ethan said nothing.
“I caught glimpses of this yesterday, Dana,” continued Sunlight. “And I can see why you built this theory.”
“It’s not just a theory,” she began, but he raised a single finger to silence her.
The X-Files Origins--Devil's Advocate Page 20
