One for the Files
by Erin PasekaWritten in late January 1999
This story is based very loosely on actual events. Any character resemblance to any living person is probably intentional, but no insult is intended. Really. Any character resemblance to preexisting fictional characters is purely coincidental, due to the FOX network's enthusiastic use of copyright laws.
If you aren't up on ghetto life, the story won't make much sense. (Not that it makes a lot of sense anyway.) If you don't watch a certain TV show, the story should still make sense, up until the last chapter, at which point you will have absolutely no idea what is happening. But that's okay, because the last chapter isn't entirely necessary; the story could end without it.
Chapter 1
Saturday, February 6, 199912:17 PM
The green Taurus turned right onto a one-way street, and the driver leaned forward to try to get a better look at the buildings on both sides of the street.
"Which one is it?" the tall man asked. "These all look like Greek houses, not dorms."
The woman in the passenger seat looked up from her map. "You probably want to change lanes; it'll be on the left side of the street. Actually, that's it right there." She pointed to a long brick building with white trim.
The man abruptly swerved across three lanes of traffic and neatly into a parallel parking spot on the left side, narrowly avoiding a half-dozen students who were trying to take advantage of the gap in traffic and cross over to the right side of the street.
"Nice turn signal, ya jerk!" a girl with loosely-curled blonde hair muttered as the group jogged across.
The man and the woman climbed out of the car and slammed their doors simultaneously. As the woman walked around the front of the car to the sidewalk, the man dug around in his pockets for change to feed the meter.
She watched him with a look of vague impatience until finally he took his hands out of his pockets and said, "Forget it, we won't be here that long."
"You sure? I've got change in my purse, in the car," she offered.
"Nah," he said. "We'll be fine. Trust me."
"Okay," she said doubtfully, turning toward the front door of the residence hall. He caught up to her with a few long strides.
They entered through the hall's main doors and found themselves in a lobby area. There were three hallways branching off, one left, one right, and one straight ahead. To the left, there was a spiral staircase, and to the right, a desk where someone appeared to be checking out a key.
"Which way?" the man asked.
She looked around, then noticed the signs above each hallway. "This way," she said, pointing to the right.
They headed for the hallway, but the deskworker saw them.
"...third time this month, but you can only check out the spare one more time after this before you have to talk to--hey, excuse me! You'll need a resident escort to go back there."
The man and woman stopped and looked at the deskworker. "A resident escort?" the man asked.
The deskworker nodded. "There's a courtesy phone right behind you, if you'd like to call the person you're visiting."
"We're not here to see someone. We're here to see someone who's not here," the man said.
"What?" the deskworker asked in bewilderment.
The man dug into his breast pocket. "Fox Mulder, FBI," he announced as he flashed his badge.
The deskworker's jaw dropped. "Oh, um, go ahead, in that case."
With that, the pair continued down the hallway.
Mulder looked up as he walked through the first doorway. "Welcome to Piper," he said, reading the sign above it.
"Hmmm," Scully commented. "Nice name."
Chapter 2
As they proceeded down the hallway, they looked back and forth to find the room number.
"You'd think they'd be in order, starting with the lower numbers," Scully commented.
"There you go again, trying to apply logic to these things."
"We're almost to the end of the hall, and I haven't seen the room. Maybe it was the other direction."
At the end of the hallway, a student stepped out of her room and gave them a strange look. "Can I help you?"
"We're with the FBI. We're investigating a disappearance." Mulder flashed his badge again. "You wouldn't happen to know anything about it, would you?"
"Oh," the student said in surprise. "My name is June. I'm the SA for this floor. I was gone the night it happened, but I know the girl. Here, I'll show you the room."
She led them around the corner of the hallway to a dead end with eight rooms.
"I didn't realize there were more rooms down here," Mulder remarked.
June shrugged. "Nobody ever does. The residents pride themselves on it."
"We just want to look around," Scully said. "We'll try to disturb the roommate as little as possible."
"Oh, she won't be there," June assured them. "This whole thing made Maggie--that's the roommate's name--pretty nervous, so she's planning to stay at her sister's for a while." She unlocked the door and let it swing open a few inches. The blinds were closed, so the room was dark. "If you need anything, I'll be around the corner."
"Thanks," Mulder said.
Scully lightly pushed the door open and stepped warily into the doorway. She flipped the lightswitch. "Oh my. They didn't say the place had been ransacked." She entered the room, carefully avoiding the papers, clothes, and other objects covering every inch of horizontal space.
Mulder followed her into the room and turned in a circle to survey the place. "Kinda homey," he commented.
"It looks as though someone may have been looking for something."
"Come on," Mulder said. "This is a dorm room. It would be an X-File if it was tidy."
"I guess this isn't entirely unlike your style of interior decorating," Scully conceded. She walked over to the desk. "I think we can rule out robbery as a motive; the computer, TV, fridge, and stereo look untouched. And there's even some money lying on the desk here."
"Hey! I found a ransom note!"
"What?" Scully hopped over a pile of books to join her partner in the doorway.
He pointed to a piece of paper taped to the wall. It had letters and words cut from magazines and newspapers, taped to a piece of notebook paper to form the message: "Looking for someone? We have Setzer. Don't despair, we will return him just in time for the holidays."
"Mulder, the girl's name is not Setzer. That looks more like a memento of a prank."
"Oh. I guess that goes with the rest of the wall decorations. All these posters of some funny-looking blonde guy and Pooh the bear."
"And this funny-looking brunette with a big nose," Scully commented. "It's amazing what freakish individuals these girls will flock to worship."
Mulder squinted at a picture of the brunette. With a concerned tone, he asked, "You'd really call him freakish?"
Suddenly there was a noise in the doorway, and both agents spun to see a small red-headed girl entering the room.
"Um, hello?" she asked.
"Excuse the intrusion," Mulder said. "We're just looking into the disappearance."
"You're Maggie, aren't you?" Scully asked.
The girl nodded and set her backpack on the desk close to the door. "I just came back to pick up a few things. I don't want to stay here until I know what happened." She sounded nervous.
"That's understandable," Scully said.
As Maggie moved around the room, collecting miscellaneous belongings, the agents continued their examination of the room.
"Do you have a recent photo of your roommate that we could see?" Mulder asked.
"Yeah," Maggie said. "There's one right in front of you on the bookshelf; it's from a few months ago. She's the one in the middle."
Mulder scrutinized the photo. "Oh."
"What?" Scully asked from across the room.
"It's just that her hair is red, but a little too red, if you know what I mean."
"I see," Scully replied.
"Where were you when she disappeared?" Mulder asked Maggie.
"I was at a party at my sister's. I didn't get back here until midnight."
"Have you noticed that anything is missing?" Scully inquired.
"No, not really," Maggie replied. "But it's not like I'd really be able to tell, as much junk as there is spread around here. I just know nothing of mine is gone."
"What about your roommate's belongings? Can you think of her valuables and whether they're still here?"
"Let's see," Maggie said slowly, looking around the room. "The computer, the TV, the scary pictures, her M&M toys, the action figures, the cheese mug... Hmmm, I don't see that anywhere. It's usually over here, or over there on top of that pile."
"The cheese mug?" Mulder repeated inquisitively.
Maggie shrugged as she searched the room. "It's got a picture of a wedge of orange cheese on it, and it says 'I Love Colby' or something like that. It was a gift from Kara, one of her band friends. It's some inside joke they've got." She stopped. "I really don't know where it is. I guess that doesn't help much, nobody in their right mind would break in here and kidnap my roommate for something like that."
"Is that all the valuables you can think of?" Scully asked.
"Yeah," Maggie said, zipping her backpack closed and swinging it over her shoulder. "I have to be going now, my sister's waiting."
Scully nodded, and Maggie left.
"She seemed nervous, but not very sad to have her roommate gone," Mulder said. Suddenly something in the wastebasket caught his attention. He crouched down to look.
"Look at her parts of the room compared to the room as a whole," Scully pointed out, oblivious to her partner's actions. "These two don't seem very compatible."
"Maybe they had a falling out. Maybe Maggie couldn't stand another semester with her," Mulder hypothesized. He picked up two halves of a torn paper from the wastebasket and put them together like puzzle pieces. It was an advertisement for a magazine subscription.
"She would have a key; that fits with the lack of forced entry," Scully said as she looked into the open closet.
"But she said she was at her sister's." He looked to see that she wasn't looking, then stuck the advertisement in his pocket.
"We may have to check that out," she replied, turning to face Mulder, who quickly tried to look nonchalant. "You know, Mulder, this isn't looking the least bit paranormal."
"I know. I'm disappointed too," he said. "But I'm working on it."
"What are you doing down there?"
"I was just, ah, going to look under the bed," he replied, dropping to his hands and knees and looking under the lower bed.
"See anything?"
"Well, something smells like cheeseburgers."
"Cheeseburgers?"
He pulled a few things out. "I think it's this skein of yarn." He sniffed it and tossed it onto the bed, then looked underneath again.
"Anything else?"
"Actually, there's a corpse under here," he said in surprise. He pulled out a body-shaped object wrapped in white plastic. It was about six inches long. He handed it to Scully. "What do you think?"
She looked at it, turning it at different angles. "I don't know; the light in here is terrible." She stepped out into the harsher flourescent lighting of the hallway and looked at the small package.
"I think you should do an autopsy," Mulder said, looking over her shoulder.
The farthest door at the end of the hall opened and a girl stepped out. Scully concealed the body and lowered her voice. "As much as I hate to turn down an opportunity to do an autopsy, considering the likely proximity of the appropriate facilities and the amount of information we would actually gain from this, I don't think I'll be doing it."
"There's got to be a morgue around here somewhere," Mulder said.
The girl passed them in the hall and said helpfully, "There's a morgue downstairs. Just go out front and take the spiral staircase down." She continued around the corner.
Mulder and Scully looked at each other.
"Why would a residence hall have a morgue?" Scully asked.
"I don't know."
"There's something definitely wrong here if a residence hall has a morgue."
He nodded.
She looked at the body in her hand. "It appears to be shrunken," she began.
"I could've told you that much."
"Other than that, I don't see much."
"Hmmm," Mulder said. "Maybe they've taken the 'shrunken head' concept a step further." He thought for a moment, then said, "If you don't want to do the autopsy, let's talk to some of the neighbors, if they're home."
Scully slipped the body into her pocket.
Chapter 3
Mulder noticed a door ajar just down the hall. He stepped up to it, about to knock, when he noticed the wipe-off message board beside the door.
It said, "Buying crack, back soon."
Scully arched an eyebrow.
Mulder knocked on the door.
"Come in," a voice called.
Mulder pushed the door open and saw a young woman at the desk, sitting on the back of her chair with her feet on the seat and a laptop on her lap.
Scully checked the names on the door. "Are you Polly?"
"No, I'm Sandra. Who are you?"
"We're investigating the disappearance of a young woman named Maureen."
"If you want our story, you can read the police report," Sandra said. "We're all tired of telling it."
"We?" Scully asked.
"The girls who live down here. Don't you have the police report?"
"We're not with the police, we're with the FBI. We haven't seen the police report yet."
"Oh."
"So do you think you can explain it now?"
"Uh, yeah..."
Suddenly two girls walking down the hallway paused in the doorway.
"Hey, Sandra, who's your company?" a perky voice asked as a smiling blonde stepped into the room. She was followed by a taller girl with glasses and long brown hair.
Sandra said, "Come on in, guys. And everybody may as well sit down; this could take a while."
Sandra moved the laptop and sat on the desk with her feet on the seat of the chair. Scully took a chair at the other desk. The taller girl sat on the lower bunk, and the blonde sat on a foam chair next to the closet. The remaining seating was a silver inflatable sofa. Mulder sat down on it and promptly fell over backward.
Once he was upright again, he said quickly, "How about some introductions?"
Sandra said, "Okay, over here on the chair is Lynn and over there sitting on the bed is Erica--they're roommates. Ladies, meet the FBI."
"Um, hi," Lynn said.
"Tell us what happened last night," Mulder said.
The girls looked at each other. "Where should we start?"
"When did you last see Maureen?"
Erica began the story. "I went down the hallway to refill my water bottle, and on the way back I stopped to ask Lori how Chuck was. While I was in the doorway, Maureen walked by. I said hi, and she said hi back. When I went back to my room, she was in her room and the door was open. That was the last time I saw her."
Sandra continued, "I saw her a little later. Brian from upstairs came to see me, so we were talking in the hallway because Polly was on the phone in here and we didn't want to disturb her." She stopped and waved to a figure in the door. "Hi, Polly."
Polly looked around. "Not this again." She sat down on the desk next to Sandra.
Sandra shrugged. "Anyway, while we were out there, Maureen came up and shut the door. I asked if we'd offended her, kinda jokingly. She opened the door again and explained that she had a bunch of theory to do, and the only way she'd get it done was if she shut the door so she wouldn't be tempted to socialize."
"The last time I saw her was earlier, around seven," Lynn explained. "Jackson took me to a movie, and that's when we left."
"And what time did you see her shut her door?" Mulder asked Sandra.
"Around eight."
"And when did you begin to wonder about her?"
"Around eleven."
Erica explained, "We were going to watch a movie in Lori's room, and we knocked on Maureen's door to see if she wanted to take a break and watch with us. There was no answer. We thought maybe she'd fallen asleep or she was listening to music with her headphones and didn't hear, so we knocked louder. As much as we pounded on the door, there was still no answer. The door was even locked."
Polly added, "We called the room, thinking we could wake her or get her attention, but we got the answering machine."
"And that's when you started to worry," Scully said.
"Yeah," Sandra said. "We saw her go in, but we never saw her go out."
"Couldn't she have left without anyone noticing?"
Sandra said, "Brian and I talked for half an hour."
"And then I came out and talked to you about computer classes for a while," Erica said, to Sandra. "I saw Lori get back and said hi to her, then I went back to my own room."
"That still leaves plenty of time when she could've left."
"We were in and out of our rooms the whole time. Our doors were open; we would've seen or heard her," Polly said. "She would've had to pass Lori and Lindsey's door to get anywhere, and Lori would've seen her if she left."
"Okay, so after you called and no one answered, what did you do?" Scully asked.
"For a while, we did what we just did here, we tried to figure out if she could've left without our knowing it," Polly said. "Eventually we went down around the corner to talk to June, our SA, about it, but she was gone. We went upstairs, and Rick, the SA up there, was home. He didn't believe us for the longest time; he thought we were trying to be funny. Finally we got him to get the key and unlock her door."
"And?"
"And she wasn't there," Erica said.
"What time was that?"
"About 11:30," Lynn said. "That's when I got back. Rick eventually talked to the residence director, who also thought they were joking around. She eventually called campus police, who came here and accused us of joking around. That was about midnight. They didn't believe us that she couldn't have left. They said if she was gone longer, or if there was any reason to believe she was in any trouble, then they would contact the city police and they could do something."
"So did the city police contact you or what?" Erica asked. "This hardly seems like FBI business."
"I received an e-mail yesterday, from someone going by the name of 'Indignigo,' and it said there was more going on here than met the eye," Mulder explained.
Chapter 4
"I've got the police report," Scully said, standing in front of Polly and Sandra's closed door, holding a manila folder. "The missing girl's roommate's story checks out; she couldn't have been here during that time frame."
"Hmmm. She could still be involved, though." Mulder's phone rang, so he pulled it out of his coat pocket. "Mulder." He waited a moment, then said, "No, I'm not--" He was interrupted, and he waited to continue. "Thank you but--" He waited again. "I really don't--" He couldn't get a word in. Finally he blurted out, "No, I do not want to sign up for a credit card!" He flipped the phone shut and pocketed it.
"Let's go down the hall and see who else might be involved in this, or might have a different story about what happened," Scully said.
Mulder followed her down the hall in the direction from which they had come initially. She knocked on the first door, but there was no response. On the markerboard, under the names Eileen and Jessica, was the message, "Gone for the weekend! Back Sun. night."
They walked to the next door, on the opposite side of the hallway. It was decorated with a gypsy theme, and beads hung over the doorway. Scully knocked, and a moment later the door opened. A girl with short reddish-blonde hair who was wearing a bathrobe squinted at them and glared. It was obvious she hadn't been awake long.
"We're Agents Scully and Mulder, with the FBI, and we're investigating the disappearance of Maureen Taylor."
The girl glared at them for a moment longer, then said, "I shan't be talking to anyone until after my shower." She picked up a towel and plastic basket with shampoo and other related items. The agents in the doorway stepped to either side of the door to allow her to pass. "And possibly not even then," she grumbled.
Mulder and Scully looked at each other, then at the girl still in the room. She was sitting at the far desk with her legs crossed, eating cereal from a bowl.
"Lindsey just got up," the girl explained. "I'm Lori."
They asked her about what had happened the previous night, and she set her bowl of Rice Chex on the desk as she related the story. Lori had gone shopping after dinner that day, and she returned around eight. Lindsey had left a little after seven with one of her friends who lived off-campus, and they didn't get back until two, when everything was over. Her story exactly matched with the other girls'. As they questioned her, they discreetly surveyed the room.
Eventually they were satisfied with her story.
"Thank you for your time," Mulder said. Both agents left the room and pulled the door closed behind them.
"Okay," Scully said, turning to her partner. "Lori's story fits with what we've got so far, but Lindsey could've been anywhere, anytime."
"She's got no alibi," Mulder agreed.
"Did you see the chicken in their room?" Scully asked.
"What, you mean Kentucky Fried?"
"No, not the food, the bird."
"A live one?" Mulder asked in surprise.
"No!"
"A dead one?"
"No, a rubber one."
"A rubber chicken?" he repeated.
"It was hanging from the smoke detector."
"And you want to bust 'em for a fire safety violation."
"No," she replied patiently. "Don't you think it's a little... odd... for these girls to have a lynched chicken prominently displayed in their room?"
He shrugged. "I didn't even notice the chicken when I walked by."
She threw up her hands in exasperation. "How could you not notice a rubber chicken hanging from the ceiling?"
"I guess I didn't think it was that out-of-the-ordinary!"
"Oh, I forgot. You're no stranger to cho--never mind."
"I'm not going to ask what you almost said," Mulder said indignantly.
Scully didn't respond. She walked over to the next door, the names on which were Ruby and Nerissa, and knocked.
"Yeah?" a voice called from behind the closed door.
"We'd like to ask you a few questions about a disappearance."
The door opened and two girls stepped up to fill the doorway.
"Do you know Maureen Taylor?" Scully asked.
"Barely," the short girl with very dark hair answered. "We don't really socialize with the other girls down at this end of the hallway."
"Why not?" Mulder inquired.
"They're... well... strange," the taller girl with curly hair replied hesitantly.
"How do you mean?" Scully asked.
"Well, at first the eight of them just yelled back and forth in the hallway, sat out here at all hours of the night talking, that kind of thing," the short girl said. "It was slightly annoying, but we didn't complain to anyone about it."
"Then things got scary," the taller girl continued. "We don't mean to eavesdrop, but we hear things. One night they were out here talking about the wood in the door frames in great detail, and then they started talking about octopuses. Another night the topic was breathing cheese-air at some restaurant. I don't know, I think it might be a drug thing. Pretty soon they were running around with buckets on their heads, and I could've sworn I saw someone with underwear on outside her jeans. And then there are the strange guys who keep coming by."
"We keep our door closed most of the time now," the other girl said. "It's just a matter of safety."
"That's about it," her roommate said. "We don't really know the girl who's missing."
"Thank you," Mulder said. "You've been very helpful."
Ruby and Nerissa returned to their room and closed the door. The agents skipped the next door, which was Maureen and Maggie's room.
Scully's phone rang, so they paused in front of the next door, Sandra and Polly's room, as she answered it. "Scully." There was a pause. "No, I'm not interested in signing up for a credit card."
Mulder looked at her. "There's something strange going on here."
Scully nodded.
"Okay, how about these two?" Mulder said, pointing to Sandra and Polly's door. "They were both there the whole time."
"We may have to send a drug unit for them, once this case is over."
"You think they were serious about the crack?"
"Mulder, I'm certain Sandra was under the influence of some substance even while she was talking to us!"
"And Polly?"
"I'm not sure. Did you see the sticky notes on the mirror?"
"What did they say?"
"One said, 'Polly and Sandra are not allowed to meet any more boys.' The other was a to-do list, which read, 'do laundry, vacuum, take over the world, read physics.'"
"Why?"
"I don't know why they would want to take over the world."
"No, I meant, why can't she meet any more boys?
"I don't know that either. Maybe we should find out."
"Yeah," Mulder said, nodding in agreement. "Anyone with inflatable furniture warrants investigation."
Scully gave him an odd look but let it go.
The next door was bare, so they assumed it was unoccupied. The door after that had the names Lynn and Erica on it. They knew the girls had just gone to lunch with Sandra and Polly, so they continued to the last door. The name on the door was Sasha, but there was no answer to their knocks.
They returned to Lynn and Erica's door and noticed the markerboard, which contained spaces for messages for three people, identified as "The non-mutant Lizard," "Godzilla," and "La Escritora con Queso."
"I think we should look around in here, too," Scully said.
Mulder nodded. "I'll go get someone to unlock the room."
A short time later, June unlocked the room for them and left them to investigate.
Mulder stepped into the room first and jumped, almost stepping back onto Scully's feet.
"What is it?" she asked.
Mulder continued into the room. "Nothing."
Scully followed him into the room and saw what had surprised him: a four-foot-tall inflatable Godzilla, wearing clothes. "So what's your impression of these two so far?" she asked, trying to ignore the lizard.
"Lynn seemed normal enough, and she was at the movie when it happened."
"But look, this violin case has Lynn's name on it. I think we know who may have orchestrated the whole thing."
"That was a very bad joke."
"You laughed."
"I most certainly did not."
"You smiled."
"Maybe a little." She redirected the conversation. "If we set aside her 'violin' tendencies, she seemed pretty normal. On the other hand, Erica showed signs of dementia."
"And general nonconformity. Look, there's an empty 20-ounce Coke bottle on top of her bookshelf."
"And this is a Pepsi campus!" Scully said, aghast.
Mulder opened the closets. "And that's not all. There's an inflatable chair in here. It's deflated, but it's here. I think we may be getting somewhere."
Scully squinted at him. "How can inflatable furniture possibly be relevant?"
"Inflatable furniture. Come on, do I have to spell it out for you?"
"Ahhh, it might help."
"Consider a normal chair: difficult to carry around with you, and it takes some effort to attack anyone with it. And then there's the inflatable chair: easily concealed when deflated, looks harmless sitting there in the room, but you turn your head and bam! You're out cold."
"Oh, really?"
"Yes! And you know what the biggest advantage of attacking with one is?"
"No, but you're going to tell me."
"Nobody expects it!"
"Mulder, that was the Spanish Inquisition."
"Oh. Well if they were still active I'm sure they'd be using inflatable furniture."
"As much as I hate to change the subject," Scully said, "I have some constructive comments to make."
"So do I. I think they're under the influence," Mulder said.
"I think we've already established that."
"No, this isn't to their knowledge. Maybe it's in their food, or the water. Hey, I saw hamburgers on their menu for several days this week. Maybe they all ate some tainted beef, from genetically-engineered cattle with growth hormones."
"And I suppose some of the genetic material was of alien origin?" Scully said.
"Now you're thinking!"
"I hate to burst your bubble, but this is government-provided food. To say that the hamburgers contained trace amounts of beef would be generous. Besides, how is eating these hypothetical alien-burgers going to make one of the girls disappear?"
"I'm working on that." There was silence as they looked around. Mulder sat down at the computer by the window and halfheartedly perused its files. "What's your theory?"
"I think we may be dealing with a cult here, and for whatever reason, they decided to sacrifice one of their own."
"A cult?"
"You heard the other girls describe the behavior of this group. You saw the lynched chicken--well, okay, you didn't see it, but trust me, it was there." She gestured to Godzilla. "And then here, they've got Godzilla in a dress. Godzilla in a dress, Mulder. We're dealing with sick individuals here."
Mulder nodded thoughtfully.
Suddenly the old TV came on at full volume, and both agents jumped. The TV was showing what appeared to be a black-and-white documentary from several decades ago.
"What did you do that for?" Scully asked.
"I didn't touch anything!" Mudler replied. He punched the power button, but nothing happened. He continued jabbing the button, but the only result was a clicking noise. He tried using the remote, but it was equally ineffective.
"Strange," Scully commented. She reached her hand toward the screen and felt the fuzziness of a large static buildup. As her fingers touched the surface, the TV turned off.
Mulder stared at the TV in amazement.
"There's got to be a reasonable explanation for this," Scully said. "Maybe the static buildup interferes with the normal functioning when--"
She was interrupted by an almost flatulent noise from the refrigerator.
"I think we should get out of here," Mulder said.
"Especially since we weren't actually supposed to be searching the room."
As soon as they stepped outside the room and closed the door, Mulder's phone rang.
"Mulder," he answered, then listened for a moment. A strange look spread across his face. "A joke about Dolly Parton and who?" he asked incredulously.
Soon he closed his phone. Scully looked as if she was about to ask him about the call, but the agents both turned to look as they heard the four girls coming down the hallway.
"...another day of listening to tales of Craig's failed fishing expeditions," Erica was saying.
"You've got to feel sorry for the few fish he does manage to snag," Polly said.
Sandra laughed. "Maybe we should drain his pond."
"Either that or break his fishing pole," Polly added.
"Wouldn't he just get another pole?" Mulder asked.
The girls broke into hysterical laughter and disappeared into their rooms.
Chapter 5
5:30 PMThe seven girls were leaving their rooms to go eat in the cafeteria with Kara, Jamie, Jackson, Craig, and Randy, who were waiting in the hallway. Polly had locked her door and was about to pull it shut.
Suddenly Mulder and Scully came around the corner to the dead end of the hallway where they all stood. "Stop where you are," Scully said.
"We're only going to dinner," Sandra replied in annoyance.
Randy looked at Mulder. He said thoughtfully, "You look awful familiar..."
Scully said, "Lindsey, Lori, Sandra, Polly, and Erica, we're going to have to ask you not to leave. The police are on their way, and you're to be placed under arrest. Lynn and Maggie, you have alibis so we really can't do anything."
"But don't leave town anytime soon," Mulder added. "You're still under suspicion."
Scully glanced at Kara, Jamie, Jackson, Randy, and Craig. "The rest of you may also be implicated in this."
"What?!" Sandra and Erica asked in unison and in indignance.
Sandra continued, "Why would we be responsible for the disappearance?"
"And how?" Erica added.
"We know about your cult," Mulder said.
The students exchanged startled looks.
"Look, the police will be here in a few minutes," Scully said. "Until then, why don't we all just go inside one of your rooms and wait."
Since they were all by Sandra and Polly's door, the dozen students and two agents all packed inside their room.
Randy turned to Sandra. "I come all the way over here to eat dinner with all of you, and then suddenly I'm being arrested."
"You're not being arrested," Erica said.
"Not yet anyway," Polly added.
"Yeah," Sandra said. "We're the ones actually being arrested."
"Well, Sandra, in your case we all knew it was bound to happen eventually," Randy said.
"That isn't funny."
"Yes it is," Jackson said. He received a swift elbow to the ribcage.
Scully leaned over to Mulder and said quietly, "I'm going to the ladies' room. I'll be right back."
He nodded, and she left the room, closing the door only partially behind her.
After drying her hands, she walked back over to the door and pushed it open. As she did so, she felt the door hit something and realized there was someone in the hallway. She'd hit the person hard enough to knock her to the floor.
"I'm so sorry," Scully said as she stepped out around the door. "Are you okay? Here, let me give you a hand." She extended an arm down to the fallen girl, who rolled over to face her but didn't take her hand.
Scully recognized the girl as Ruby, one of the neighbors who'd helped them determine the guilt of the other girls. Then Scully noticed the plastic sack of trash that Ruby had been carrying, probably to the trash chute down the hall. When Ruby had hit the floor, the sack had come open, spreading its contents across the floor. Scully bent to pick up a mug from the pile. It had a picture of a wedge of cheese on it.
Scully looked from the pile to Ruby, and Ruby knew that she knew. Scrambling to her feet, Ruby took off down the hallway in a panic.
"Mulder, don't let Nerissa leave!" Scully shouted, then dropped the mug and sprinted after Ruby.
She followed the short brunette out the front door of the hall and down to the street. Ruby ran out into the one-way traffic without so much as a glance at the cars. Scully began to follow her but abruptly stopped when she saw how close the truck was. She quickly stepped back between two parked cars and waited.
Vehicles honked and swerved, but by this time Ruby had reached the other side of the street unharmed. She stepped onto the curb, still running. Unfortunately for her, her foot was on a patch of ice and slid right out from under her. Her arms flailed wildly as she tried to regain her balance, but she went down hard.
By this time there was a gap in traffic and Scully jogged across to the immobilized girl.
Meanwhile, just after Scully had left for the bathroom, Mulder's cell phone had rung. It was one of his superiors, wondering why he wasn't where he was supposed to be.
"It's just a slight delay," Mulder explained. "It's almost cleared up."
He heard Scully yell from down the hall, "Mulder, don't let Nerissa leave!"
Confused, he looked to the twelve students, five of whom he was supposed to make sure stayed for their arrest. They looked curious, but they didn't look like they were going to resist arrest either.
"Stay here," he mouthed silently to them, so that the man on the phone wouldn't hear him. He walked out into the hall and pulled the door shut behind him, still with the phone held to his ear with his right hand but no longer listening. He saw the trash down by the bathroom door, but there was no sign of his partner.
He took a few steps down the hall and knocked on Nerissa's door. There was no answer.
"Anyone home?" he asked loudly, momentarily forgetting the phone.
Again there was no response, so he tried the knob with his left hand, since the phone was still in his right. The knob turned; it was unlocked.
Warily, he pushed the door open and stepped inside the dim room. The lights were off and the curtains were closed, but some outside light streamed in through the gaps between the curtains.
Suddenly a figure on the top bunk lunged at him. He was caught off balance, but he pushed Nerissa away.
She grabbed the phone off the desk, waving it threateningly, her teeth clenched and a wild look in her eyes. Mulder still held his own phone. They turned in circles, facing each other like wrestlers waiting for the right moment for an attack.
Suddenly, as Nerissa stood with her back to the bunkbed, a pair of feet came out from under the bottom bunk and tripped her. Nerissa fell onto her stomach with a grunt.
Mulder immediately kicked the phone across the room, safely out of reach. Nerissa looked up at him angrily. Pointing his own phone down at her, he warned, "Don't even think about moving." As he handcuffed her, he said, "You've only got one phone call, and you won't be making it from here."
By this time, the other person had wriggled out from under the bed.
"Maureen?" Mulder asked.
Wide-eyed, Maureen nodded.
Mulder untied the dirty socks that had been used to bind her hands and feet. "You okay?"
She nodded quickly, still staring at him.
Chapter 6
Fifteen minutes later, everyone was together in the Birch Room, an open public area. Mulder, Scully, Maureen, Maggie, Erica, Lynn, Lori, Lindsey, Polly, Sandra, Jamie, Kara, Randy, Craig, Nerissa, and Ruby all sat down on the circle of sofas.
Scully looked at the purple bump on Maureen's temple. "It'll be sore for a while, but I don't think it's anything serious."
"Good," Maureen said.
"When can we eat?" Craig asked.
"After the police get here," Mulder answered.
"What exactly happened?" Sandra asked.
"Yeah, how did you end up in their room?" Polly added.
"And how did you hit your head?" Scully added.
Maureen explained, "It was about ten, and I was tired of working already. I decided to wash out my mug--"
"You took a break for a silly reason just to stop working for a while?" Sandra interrupted.
Most of the students looked at her curiously.
"Sarcasm, people, sarcasm," she said, rolling her eyes.
Maureen continued, "Anyway, I stepped outside the room and pulled the door shut behind me, but then I realized I'd locked it without even thinking, and my key was still inside. I knew Maggie wouldn't be back for a few hours, so I'd have to get the loaner key again. I was kicking myself for being so dumb, but I went to wash the mug anyway. The hallway was pretty quiet and empty, except for Ruby, who was sitting on the floor in her doorway, talking on the phone. I smiled at her, but she glared at me, so I stepped closer to the wall to avoid her. As I passed her, she stuck her foot out and tripped me. The last thing I saw was that phone of hers coming down at my head.
"I woke up a while later, under the bed in their room, and I couldn't move. I still had the mug with me. I tried to roll out from under there, but she heard me moving and yelled at me." Maureen paused to look at Ruby. "She waved the phone around like a weapon and told me not to move or make a sound. Some time later--hours, I think--Nerissa got home. Ruby exclaimed something like, 'I got one of them! We can do it now!' and they both seemed really happy. They pulled back the blanket and crouched down to peek at me.
"Then they lit a bunch of candles around the room, and pretty soon they were speaking in tongues like they were possessed. I have no idea what they were doing, but I seriously doubt it was for the benefit of my health."
"We weren't possessed!" Ruby interrupted. "Those are the words the book said you have to use!"
"Use for what?" Scully asked.
"For the curse," Nerissa answered, with a sneer in Maureen's direction. "We were going to put a curse on the eight of them, but in order to do that we had to actually have one of them."
"Why put a curse on them?"
"Because they're weird! Obviously!"
"What happened next?" someone asked Maureen.
"This morning, when you FBI people showed up, they were really worried and they started talking about how to get rid of my body without attracting any attention. Later, when they realized that you were suspecting the other girls, they saw that their curse appeared to be working. They couldn't agree on whether the others would be imprisoned, kicked out of the university, or just split up and moved elsewhere, but in any case it was better for Ruby and Nerissa.
"Later, they heard you say that the other girls would be arrested, and they were convinced that their plan was working. Unfortunately, I was still there. I said they could just let me go, but they told me to shut up. They knew that would just undo everything they had gleefully watched build outside their door. At one point I threw my mug at them, but they just put it in the trash and said they'd have to get rid of it because it was evidence against them. Then I was the only remaining evidence. They just didn't know what to do with me."
"What I wouldn't have given for a woodchipper," Ruby spat.
"Somebody's been watching Fargo entirely too much," Nerissa said coldly, turning to her roommate.
"You're just too much of a pacifist," Ruby replied. "You wouldn't even let me bash her over the head with the phone to kill her."
"Are you kidding? And mess up the carpet?" Nerissa said. "And how do you think we would've got the body down to the trash chute without anyone noticing? You ever think about that? I didn't think so!"
"I don't think I like this conversation," Maureen said quietly as she shrank back into the sofa between Mulder and Maggie, but no one was paying attention to her.
"We could've wrapped her in a blanket or something!" Ruby said.
"They don't even like it when you put a pizza box down there! You think a whole person would fit?"
"Duh, that's why I wanted the ax. The ax which you refused to get for me. You just aren't any fun."
"I let you torture her!"
"I guess you're right."
"How did she torture you?" Polly asked Maureen.
Maureen put her head in her hands. "Oh, it was terrible! Hour after hour, she punched buttons on that phone of hers, and I couldn't even cover my ears. I thought I would lose my mind!"
"A little late for that," Maggie mumbled.
Soon the local authorities arrived, and statements were formally taken from everyone involved. After a long time, Ruby and Nerissa were led away.
"You're free to go now," Scully said to the students remaining in the Birch Room.
"Good. Let's go eat," Craig said, eagerly standing up.
"Patience, Sweet Pea," Jamie said as the rest of the group got to their feet. Mulder recognized her as the blonde who'd called him a jerk when he nearly ran her over to get into the parking space.
Craig gave Jamie an odd look, then let it go. "But I'm dying of starvation here!"
"For once in my life," Maureen began, "I agree with Craig. Let's go."
The mob slowly made its way down the hallway, toward the cafeteria where the students would eat and toward the door through which the agents would depart.
"You still think we're cult members, don't you?" Sandra asked the FBI agents.
"The evidence is all still there," Mulder replied.
"So watch yourselves," Scully said. "We know what kinds of strange things you're up to."
"And we make no secret of it," Erica said with a shrug. "We even announce a lot of it on our web page."
"Give them the address," Lynn suggested eagerly.
"I really doubt they want it."
"We already have it," Mulder admitted. "I found it on one of your computers."
"We do apologize for the mistake here," Scully said. "You're guilty of something, just not this assault and kidnapping, and not anything we can prove."
"Hey," Sandra said, "Just to show there's no hard feelings, you wanna come eat dinner with us?"
"In the dining hall?" Mulder asked suspiciously.
"You know it's an imprisonable offense to threaten the life of a federal agent," Scully said warningly. Then she almost smiled. "But thanks anyway."
"We really have to be going," Mulder said. "We were supposed to be in Kansas City an hour ago."
Scully's cell phone rang, so she fished it out of her pocket, flipped it open, and put it to her ear. "Scully."
The voice on the phone, a young man, said slowly and deeply, "I want cookies. I want cookies!"
Scully flipped the phone shut and returned it to her pocket. "Let's get out of here."
With that, the agents exited through the front door of the hall. Outside, their green Taurus was nowhere to be seen. In its place was a vaguely car-shaped pile of parking tickets.
"Yeah, we won't be here that long. We'll be fine. Trust me," Scully said.
Mulder just shook his head and started digging for the car.
Chapter 7
Meanwhile, the first floor hallway in Piper was silent and empty all the way down to the dead end. In the stairway, the washers and dryers in the laundry room downstairs were audible. They were not particularly loud, but it was enough to drown out a lot of other sound. In fact, without actually putting one's ear to the closed door marked "Maintenance" next to the laundry room, one would not have been able to hear the two girls inside. Locked in the darkness, they shouted and pounded their fists against the door, but no one could hear them over the washers and dryers.
Far down the street was the white SUV marked boldly with the word "Police" into which the students and federal agents had seen Ruby and Nerissa herded minutes before. The two young women in the back seat stared expressiolessly out the window as the vehicle drove past the police station. Several blocks later, the vehicle stopped in a parking lot beside a hotel.
"You think they bought it?" the short girl with dark hair asked.
"Hook, line, and sinker," the driver replied with a chuckle.
"Definitely," the officer in the passenger seat agreed. "We've got them right where we want them."
"Did you really have to cuff us?" the curly-haired girl asked.
"Yeah. To complete the illusion," the officer in the passenger seat said. He turned around halfway in his seat. "Put your hands up here and I'll unlock you."
Moments later the cuffs were off, and the officer watched in amusement as the two "suspects" morphed from young women to middle-aged men before his eyes.
"So, any idea what's to become of our ex-doubles?" one of them asked.
"They'll probably kill 'em," the other replied.
"Not this time," the driver said. "I guess somebody's feeling generous. Once we conveniently lose the paperwork, you two--or rather your former identities--will be freed on a technicality and allowed to resume their normal lives. At that point, the girls will be released."
"Won't they just say, hey, we didn't kidnap anybody, we're the ones who have been locked up for a week?"
"Probably. But no one will believe them. It will only seem like they're trying to concoct crazy stories to deny they were involved in the girl's kidnapping--which would coincidentally be true. Eventually they'll have to just give up and go back to their normal lives." He studied the two occupants of the back seat and chuckled. "You know, I think I liked you better as women."
"Shut up," one of the men replied. "That's got to be the worst job I ever pulled. Just pathetic."
"I can think of worse jobs," the driver said. "Think of Krycek."
"Krycek?" a man in the back seat repeated. "Why? What's he doing?"
Back in Piper, up the stairs on the second floor, the door to one of the rooms in the dead-end of the hallway stood open a crack. Inside, a dark-haired man clearly too old to be a traditional student but still too young to be mistaken for a professor removed his leather jacket and threw it over the back of a chair. He then peeled off his white T-shirt and put on a navy blue T-shirt with white lettering: "University Housing Cleaning Crew." He pulled a matching blue cap over his dark brown hair, then grabbed a set of keys off the desk and stuck them in the pocket of his jeans.
He headed for the door, but halfway out he abruptly stopped. He walked over to the stereo and punched a few buttons, flooding the room with deafening music. The entire room shook with the bass. Covering his ears, he locked the door, left the room, and jogged down two flights of stairs to the basement.
He unlocked a closet and removed a mop bucket, which he wheeled back down toward the stairs. He dunked the mop into the dingy water, removed it, and slapped it down on the tile floor, sloshing water across the hallway.
There was a beeping, and he leaned against the mop as he removed a small cell phone from his pocket. "Yeah?" he answered.
"How's the arm?" the voice asked.
The man cautiously moved his left arm, watching as if surprised at his own movement. "Better than I'd hoped," he replied.
"Good. Now about your end of the bargain."
"I'm here, aren't I?" he said in annoyance.
"And you're certain no one will notice anything for a time?"
"Look, upstairs there's so much bass no one can hear themselves think, and down here the laundry room makes enough noise to drown anything out."
"Just make sure the noise is always there."
"Yeah, yeah," the man said, absently swirling the mop on the floor. "Why are we doing all of this?"
"That's not for you to know."
"Yes it is. By now I'm in this as deep as you are."
"You overestimate your influence. I could crush you at any moment."
"As I recall, you tried that at least once. I'm still here." Approaching footsteps were audible up the stairs. "Someone's coming," he said, staring up through the gap in the middle between the two sides of the stairway.
"I'll be in touch."
He pocketed the cell phone and quickly resumed mopping. As the girl jogged into view on the landing above, he lowered his head and stepped out of her way. She proceeded to remove her laundry from a dryer. As she passed him again on her way back with her full laundry basket, he warily watched her ascend the stairs.
A moment later one of the washers stopped, and it was quiet. A muffled pounding was audible from behind the door marked "Maintenance." The man leaned his mop against the wall, walked quickly into the laundry room, and dug into his pocket. He removed a handful of change and started one of the washers, then went back to mopping.