If It Isn't Aliens, It Must Be Demons...
Character: Dana Scully
Fandom: Supernatural and X Files
Rating: R
Word Count: 1994
Prompt: Music Prompt: Girl You Got Magic Inside You
Chapter: 2/?
Setting: After X-files: I Want to Believe, and during Season 4 of Supernatural. There will be Spoilers.
Notes: This will be a collaboration with CallMeDean, aka Dean Winchester
“A mold infestation,” Mulder’s skeptical tone sounded disturbingly like her own, and Scully frowned at him sideways from the passenger’s seat of their rental car, the FBI case notes in her hand.
“That’s what the CDC and the Indiana Department of Conservation and Wildlife said,” Scully insisted softly, as she struggled to read in the waning light of the Indiana autumn evening. “Samples from the lawns of most of the residents in the cul-de-sac showed high levels of a particular black mold in the soil that, when analyzed, was shown to have a highly hallucinogenic effect, much in the same way that the ergot fungus effects cereal products.”
“Maybe it’s just me, Scully, but do you think Skinner would go to the trouble of calling in a favor on two of us on a bad trip from lawn clippings,” Mulder glanced at her as he returned to reading street signs.
“I owed Skinner,” Scully closed the file with a snap, her mouth firming into a line. “He pulled a lot of strings to help me find your ass in West Virginia. He put himself in jeopardy with a lot of people, Mulder, who frankly would rather never hear your name in connection with the FBI again. I think the least I could do is humor him and help him and the CDC out here by taking a few days to poke around some front yards and take some lawn samples.”
“Sort of petty work for a highly paid, neurosurgeon who just cured a boy from an incurable illness, ” Mulder’s monotone was just on the edge of sounding smug.
“Mulder, I don’t think the FBI or the CDC is in the mood to hear your ideas on demons,” Scully retorted pointedly, but a smile softened her tone. There was comfort in the familiar here, Mulder rushing immediately to the farfetched, while she stayed to the straight and narrow. “Speaking as a person who once had ergot poisoning, I know what sort of strange things you see when it affects you.”
“True, but the effects of your tattoo were limited to you and you alone,” Mulder’s right hand let go of the steering wheel and tapped the file in her hands. “There were thirty people there that night, all of them suffering from the same effects of the mold infestation. All of them claimed to have lost an hour of their lives, going from doing their normal routine to lying on the ground outside their neighbor’s house, unsure of how they got there, but knowing they felt violated, as if something or someone had taken over their bodies in the interim.”
“I’m surprised that you weren’t jumping to alien abductions,” Scully teased, as Mulder shook his head, his eyebrows knitting in thought.
“I considered that at first, but while the victims all profess to have memory loss, none of the rest of their account follows the standard abduction MO.”
“So you immediately conclude that if it isn’t aliens, then it must be demons?”
“Perhaps not demons, Scully, but there’s more to this case than just mold. Have you ever heard of demon hunters?”
“Demon hunters? You mean the half-crazed men we’d run into, running around with shotguns and screaming that Satan had infected the youth of their community, and that’s why their crops were failing?” She had one too many vivid memories of seemingly sane looking people shoving weapons in her face when she tried to pull out her badge and talk reasonably to them.
“Not mass hysteria, real demon hunters, people who spend their lives searching for those they believe are the spawns of hell, Satan, or just plain evil. Every once in a while I’d run across a case or two involving them in the X-files. Most of them were too difficult for me to follow up on, demon hunters by their nature don’t precisely advertise themselves.”
“So are we talking about some secret, vigilante force out murdering unwitting innocents, all under the name of the Church?” Her right hand wandered to her cross, her sense of faith and of justice revolted at the idea.
“I’m not sure if they are related with anything particularly religious, Scully, remember the idea of vengeful or dangerous spirits is found in many cultures through centuries of myth and legend, and not just in Judeo-Christian folk lore. Chances are these people modern interpretations of some of the same types of groups that used to perform the same function in Europe and the early American colonies, hunting out witches, demon spawn, anyone who was unique or different, the ‘other’ in order to remove them as a threat.”
“And what makes you think demon hunters have anything to do with this case?” She found herself wondering for the millionth time why it was that whenever she had herself believing that any situation was a cut and dry medical mystery, Mulder somehow was able to twist it into a case of the supernatural and paranormal.
“Funny you should ask that,” Mulder slowed the car slightly as he attempted to read the street sign ahead of them. “While the police were searching the house where the victims all congregated, they found two sets of fingerprints, belonging to Dean and Samuel Winchester.” He reached inside the side pocket of his light jacket, and handed Scully two folded, printed pages, each with the summary of the FBI files of the two men. “The Winchester boys have been wanted for a long time for a string of lots of interesting crimes, from credit card fraud to identity theft, but most especially for some strange, unexplained murders that should strike a bell with some of the victims in this case.”
“And what makes you think they are demon hunters,” Scully studied the color photos of the pair. Neither looked old enough to be criminals in her mind, the younger man was a studious looking kid, he struck her as barely old enough to have graduated college. The older one looked slightly tougher, a bit more experienced, but with a hard, cocky gleam in his eye that reminded her very much of Mulder when she first met him.
“Outside of Jimmy Swaggert, how many scam artists do you know who run around carrying holy water and crucifixes?” Mulder turned their car into a cul-de-sac, lit only by the pale, yellow glow of the street lamps on the sidewalk. All of the houses stood dark and silent, their perfectly manicured lawns were empty beside the car-less driveways, and their neatly trimmed mailboxes stood sentinal beside the gently, swinging ‘for sale’ signs. The neighborhood was deserted. Scully felt her skin crawl for no reason.
“I still don’t get it, Mulder, if the Winchester brothers are dead, why would the police find their prints at some random crime scene?”
“Investigators after the time of the incident interviewed the family whose home was attacked. The parents both insisted that their daughter had been acting strangely all week, that she was possessed by a demon and was responsible for the death of her grandparents.”
“I read through the crime scene investigation too, Mulder, the daughter was seven-years-old, she couldn’t have killed her grandparents. Even if she had tried, they both died from twisted necks, the force required to do that…”
“Can’t be wielded by a child, I know that. Unless, of course…” Mulder didn’t finish the sentence as he parked near the only house in the cul-de-sac that didn’t have a sign. It too was abandoned, just like it’s neighbors.
“So you are saying that all these people, and that little girl, were all possessed by some demon, and that’s why these Winchester brothers were here, leaving fingerprints all over the place?”
“You said it yourself, the girl was displaying force that no child of her age could ever do. And all of the focus of the incident was centered on the house. What if the little girl was possessed, and through that was controlling the neighbors to do her bidding.”
“Which means these two would have been here to kill the little girl,” Scully felt distaste coat her mouth with sour bile as she regarded the pictures of the pair again, trying to imagine two such normal looking young men ever threatening a child. “They didn’t go through with it though, the girl is alive.”
“Yeah, but no one has seen either of them since.” Mulder was staring straight ahead of them. In front was the back end of a large, black, 1970’s era Impala.
“I hate to return to the real reason I was asked on this case,” Scully blinked briefly at the car before attempting to ground them both down in reality again. “But how do we know that the parents’ explanation of the little girl and what she did that night wasn’t brought on by the same mold that effected everyone else?”
“How would you explain then the prints of two dead men in the house,” Mulder was frowning at the car in front of them, and then at the house. “Have you noticed how quiet the neighborhood is?”
“Of course, everyone was in a rush to move out once they realized what was going on.” Scully wasn’t terribly concerned. “Why?”
“Don’t you find it odd that there is a random car parked in the street of a neighborhood that is supposed to be empty?”
Had it been in their old FBI days, she would have reached for her gun. Lacking one of those now, she opted to reach around her to the back seat, where her purse and a heavy flashlight lay. “It could be nobody, Mulder.”
“Nobody wouldn’t be driving that nice of a car,” he returned, as he felt around his ankle. She desperately hoped he wasn’t carrying a concealed firearm without a permit, but knowing Mulder and his healthy disregard for most rules, she wouldn’t be terribly surprised if he did.
“Come on,” he reached behind him to grab his own flashlight, and flipped it on to light the way up the walk to the front door. It was locked, but Mulder pulled out his lock-picking device, and quickly opened the front door, shining his light in front of him. A dark brown patch stained the front carpet, and there was a lingering, musty smell of dust, mildew, and old blood that lingered in the air. Scully wrinkled her nose as she followed behind Mulder, shining her light up the stairs and around into the dining room. More dark stains marred the wood finish. She wondered briefly just what had been going on in this house, and what sort of hallucinations could drive anyone, let alone a child, to such brutality.
There was a creek somewhere in the rooms above them, and Scully’s eyes locked with Mulder’s silently, as they silently conversed, their old habit from their more dangerous days. As usual, Mulder moved ahead of her and up the stairs, reaching down for his ankle as he did so. Just as she had feared, he pulled the ankle gun he had registered years ago out from under his jeans, and slowly crept up the staircase, making sure that she was shielded safely behind him. Sans a weapon of her own, she obliged, and carefully stepped behind him, her small, lithe feet not making a sound.
The second floor was as silent and still as the first, with less of the smell of death surrounding it. One bedroom door was completely open, but another’s door was partially shut, and Scully could hear rustling inside. She briefly touched Mulder’s shoulder as he nodded and moved forward, gun ready as moved to the edge of the door to peer inside. She prayed it was looters; punk kids with little more than themselves and their loot and no weapons with which to shoot back.
She hung back as in one swift motion Mulder moved the door, gun aimed in front of him, “don’t move, I’m armed.”
Fandom: Supernatural and X Files
Rating: R
Word Count: 1994
Prompt: Music Prompt: Girl You Got Magic Inside You
Chapter: 2/?
Setting: After X-files: I Want to Believe, and during Season 4 of Supernatural. There will be Spoilers.
Notes: This will be a collaboration with CallMeDean, aka Dean Winchester
“A mold infestation,” Mulder’s skeptical tone sounded disturbingly like her own, and Scully frowned at him sideways from the passenger’s seat of their rental car, the FBI case notes in her hand.
“That’s what the CDC and the Indiana Department of Conservation and Wildlife said,” Scully insisted softly, as she struggled to read in the waning light of the Indiana autumn evening. “Samples from the lawns of most of the residents in the cul-de-sac showed high levels of a particular black mold in the soil that, when analyzed, was shown to have a highly hallucinogenic effect, much in the same way that the ergot fungus effects cereal products.”
“Maybe it’s just me, Scully, but do you think Skinner would go to the trouble of calling in a favor on two of us on a bad trip from lawn clippings,” Mulder glanced at her as he returned to reading street signs.
“I owed Skinner,” Scully closed the file with a snap, her mouth firming into a line. “He pulled a lot of strings to help me find your ass in West Virginia. He put himself in jeopardy with a lot of people, Mulder, who frankly would rather never hear your name in connection with the FBI again. I think the least I could do is humor him and help him and the CDC out here by taking a few days to poke around some front yards and take some lawn samples.”
“Sort of petty work for a highly paid, neurosurgeon who just cured a boy from an incurable illness, ” Mulder’s monotone was just on the edge of sounding smug.
“Mulder, I don’t think the FBI or the CDC is in the mood to hear your ideas on demons,” Scully retorted pointedly, but a smile softened her tone. There was comfort in the familiar here, Mulder rushing immediately to the farfetched, while she stayed to the straight and narrow. “Speaking as a person who once had ergot poisoning, I know what sort of strange things you see when it affects you.”
“True, but the effects of your tattoo were limited to you and you alone,” Mulder’s right hand let go of the steering wheel and tapped the file in her hands. “There were thirty people there that night, all of them suffering from the same effects of the mold infestation. All of them claimed to have lost an hour of their lives, going from doing their normal routine to lying on the ground outside their neighbor’s house, unsure of how they got there, but knowing they felt violated, as if something or someone had taken over their bodies in the interim.”
“I’m surprised that you weren’t jumping to alien abductions,” Scully teased, as Mulder shook his head, his eyebrows knitting in thought.
“I considered that at first, but while the victims all profess to have memory loss, none of the rest of their account follows the standard abduction MO.”
“So you immediately conclude that if it isn’t aliens, then it must be demons?”
“Perhaps not demons, Scully, but there’s more to this case than just mold. Have you ever heard of demon hunters?”
“Demon hunters? You mean the half-crazed men we’d run into, running around with shotguns and screaming that Satan had infected the youth of their community, and that’s why their crops were failing?” She had one too many vivid memories of seemingly sane looking people shoving weapons in her face when she tried to pull out her badge and talk reasonably to them.
“Not mass hysteria, real demon hunters, people who spend their lives searching for those they believe are the spawns of hell, Satan, or just plain evil. Every once in a while I’d run across a case or two involving them in the X-files. Most of them were too difficult for me to follow up on, demon hunters by their nature don’t precisely advertise themselves.”
“So are we talking about some secret, vigilante force out murdering unwitting innocents, all under the name of the Church?” Her right hand wandered to her cross, her sense of faith and of justice revolted at the idea.
“I’m not sure if they are related with anything particularly religious, Scully, remember the idea of vengeful or dangerous spirits is found in many cultures through centuries of myth and legend, and not just in Judeo-Christian folk lore. Chances are these people modern interpretations of some of the same types of groups that used to perform the same function in Europe and the early American colonies, hunting out witches, demon spawn, anyone who was unique or different, the ‘other’ in order to remove them as a threat.”
“And what makes you think demon hunters have anything to do with this case?” She found herself wondering for the millionth time why it was that whenever she had herself believing that any situation was a cut and dry medical mystery, Mulder somehow was able to twist it into a case of the supernatural and paranormal.
“Funny you should ask that,” Mulder slowed the car slightly as he attempted to read the street sign ahead of them. “While the police were searching the house where the victims all congregated, they found two sets of fingerprints, belonging to Dean and Samuel Winchester.” He reached inside the side pocket of his light jacket, and handed Scully two folded, printed pages, each with the summary of the FBI files of the two men. “The Winchester boys have been wanted for a long time for a string of lots of interesting crimes, from credit card fraud to identity theft, but most especially for some strange, unexplained murders that should strike a bell with some of the victims in this case.”
“And what makes you think they are demon hunters,” Scully studied the color photos of the pair. Neither looked old enough to be criminals in her mind, the younger man was a studious looking kid, he struck her as barely old enough to have graduated college. The older one looked slightly tougher, a bit more experienced, but with a hard, cocky gleam in his eye that reminded her very much of Mulder when she first met him.
“Outside of Jimmy Swaggert, how many scam artists do you know who run around carrying holy water and crucifixes?” Mulder turned their car into a cul-de-sac, lit only by the pale, yellow glow of the street lamps on the sidewalk. All of the houses stood dark and silent, their perfectly manicured lawns were empty beside the car-less driveways, and their neatly trimmed mailboxes stood sentinal beside the gently, swinging ‘for sale’ signs. The neighborhood was deserted. Scully felt her skin crawl for no reason.
“I still don’t get it, Mulder, if the Winchester brothers are dead, why would the police find their prints at some random crime scene?”
“Investigators after the time of the incident interviewed the family whose home was attacked. The parents both insisted that their daughter had been acting strangely all week, that she was possessed by a demon and was responsible for the death of her grandparents.”
“I read through the crime scene investigation too, Mulder, the daughter was seven-years-old, she couldn’t have killed her grandparents. Even if she had tried, they both died from twisted necks, the force required to do that…”
“Can’t be wielded by a child, I know that. Unless, of course…” Mulder didn’t finish the sentence as he parked near the only house in the cul-de-sac that didn’t have a sign. It too was abandoned, just like it’s neighbors.
“So you are saying that all these people, and that little girl, were all possessed by some demon, and that’s why these Winchester brothers were here, leaving fingerprints all over the place?”
“You said it yourself, the girl was displaying force that no child of her age could ever do. And all of the focus of the incident was centered on the house. What if the little girl was possessed, and through that was controlling the neighbors to do her bidding.”
“Which means these two would have been here to kill the little girl,” Scully felt distaste coat her mouth with sour bile as she regarded the pictures of the pair again, trying to imagine two such normal looking young men ever threatening a child. “They didn’t go through with it though, the girl is alive.”
“Yeah, but no one has seen either of them since.” Mulder was staring straight ahead of them. In front was the back end of a large, black, 1970’s era Impala.
“I hate to return to the real reason I was asked on this case,” Scully blinked briefly at the car before attempting to ground them both down in reality again. “But how do we know that the parents’ explanation of the little girl and what she did that night wasn’t brought on by the same mold that effected everyone else?”
“How would you explain then the prints of two dead men in the house,” Mulder was frowning at the car in front of them, and then at the house. “Have you noticed how quiet the neighborhood is?”
“Of course, everyone was in a rush to move out once they realized what was going on.” Scully wasn’t terribly concerned. “Why?”
“Don’t you find it odd that there is a random car parked in the street of a neighborhood that is supposed to be empty?”
Had it been in their old FBI days, she would have reached for her gun. Lacking one of those now, she opted to reach around her to the back seat, where her purse and a heavy flashlight lay. “It could be nobody, Mulder.”
“Nobody wouldn’t be driving that nice of a car,” he returned, as he felt around his ankle. She desperately hoped he wasn’t carrying a concealed firearm without a permit, but knowing Mulder and his healthy disregard for most rules, she wouldn’t be terribly surprised if he did.
“Come on,” he reached behind him to grab his own flashlight, and flipped it on to light the way up the walk to the front door. It was locked, but Mulder pulled out his lock-picking device, and quickly opened the front door, shining his light in front of him. A dark brown patch stained the front carpet, and there was a lingering, musty smell of dust, mildew, and old blood that lingered in the air. Scully wrinkled her nose as she followed behind Mulder, shining her light up the stairs and around into the dining room. More dark stains marred the wood finish. She wondered briefly just what had been going on in this house, and what sort of hallucinations could drive anyone, let alone a child, to such brutality.
There was a creek somewhere in the rooms above them, and Scully’s eyes locked with Mulder’s silently, as they silently conversed, their old habit from their more dangerous days. As usual, Mulder moved ahead of her and up the stairs, reaching down for his ankle as he did so. Just as she had feared, he pulled the ankle gun he had registered years ago out from under his jeans, and slowly crept up the staircase, making sure that she was shielded safely behind him. Sans a weapon of her own, she obliged, and carefully stepped behind him, her small, lithe feet not making a sound.
The second floor was as silent and still as the first, with less of the smell of death surrounding it. One bedroom door was completely open, but another’s door was partially shut, and Scully could hear rustling inside. She briefly touched Mulder’s shoulder as he nodded and moved forward, gun ready as moved to the edge of the door to peer inside. She prayed it was looters; punk kids with little more than themselves and their loot and no weapons with which to shoot back.
She hung back as in one swift motion Mulder moved the door, gun aimed in front of him, “don’t move, I’m armed.”