Diametrically Opposed
by mountainphile

************
Chapter 16
************

Hocking County, Ohio
March 16, 2001
10:25 AM

Mulder fully expected to find the name "Willow Wind
Nightingale" staring up at him from the page in the Hocking 
County phone book.  The listing, however, was nowhere near the 
one she'd given out to the cabbie on the previous night.

This time Hostetler had been right on the money.  
  
From the accident scene, Mulder headed for the car rental 
company to exchange the silver Sentra-that-roared for a 
purring Taurus.  Its mud-brown color and scuffed finish would 
camouflage well while he made several stops and tested out a 
theory.

The first didn't warrant any stop at all.  He simply drove by 
Willow's faux address -- a parking garage -- at a speed slow 
enough to study the exterior and postulate his next move.  
Twenty minutes later he reached the aptly named town of 
Chancey, an afterthought on the Ohio map.  

Only a metal sign, pockmarked by target practice, and a single 
paved loop of road identified its location.  Under an overcast 
sky he saw no town center, no other downtown or neighborhoods.  
An unincorporated rural burgh, Chancey seemed perfectly 
content to lie fallow while the rest of the county blossomed 
up around it.  

After realizing he'd blown right through it, he backtracked, 
determined not to blink and miss again.  Besides the arc of 
pavement near the sign, several smaller roads sprouted from 
both sides of the highway.  Some bore a number instead of a 
name, while others had no signpost at all.  Unpaved and 
nondescript, they wormed back through weeds and trees, crimped 
by twists and turns in the hilly wooded terrain.  

Mulder pulled up in front of the first and only building he 
saw and got out before the short loop of asphalt could dump 
him back onto the highway again.  On closer inspection, the 
residence revealed signage: 'General Store & USPO.'  Now he 
noticed the empty flagpole out front.  Saw gas pumps squatting 
in the side yard next to depleted stacks of cordwood and a 
smattering of rusty equipment.  

A man stepped from the front door, dressed in neat flannel 
shirt and Levi's.  He scratched his whiskers and prominent 
belly.

"Anything I can do to help, stranger?"

"I'm looking for someone," said Mulder, "but I don't know the 
correct street address."

"Around here we all go by name, face, and P.O. box numbers."  
He pointed up toward the naked pole to make his point.  

"You're the postmaster?"

"That I am.  Plus I tend to the general store and the service 
station both.  Store's open all day and I got plenty of gas."

"I'll bet.  How do I find where any one lives around here?"

"Well... that all depends on who you're after."

"Do you know a woman named Willow Wind Nightingale?"

The man laughed.  "What do you need?  Some fortune-telling 
done, or your aura read -- or knowing which pretty lady has a 
liking for you?  Far as that goes, the woman's got a rare 
streak o' talent, I hear." 

"None of the above.  Would you mind telling me where I could 
find Willow's house?"

Fondling his whiskers, the other grew thoughtful.  "You know, 
folks that visit her make appointments by phone instead of 
showing up unannounced.  She gives them directions and claims 
she has more time to prepare the spirits if folks aren't 
arriving unexpected."  He chuckled again.  "But I'll wager she 
uses all that extra time on yard work and gardening."

Mulder flipped out his badge, deadpan.  He waited as the man 
took a close look and digested the information.  

"Well, in that case... I can tell you she lives on the old 
Coal Dock road that heads out towards Kirby's farm, right over 
there.  County calls it Rural Route 4, but a snowplow whacked 
the sign down about three years ago and the government's 
dragging its hind parts about replacing it."

"What else?"

"Be sure to honk when you drive up.  Let her know you're 
coming since she can't see over the fence if she's out pruning 
and puttering somewhere in the yard."

Already moving toward his car, Mulder came to a slow stop.  
"How tall would you guess Willow Nightingale is?"

"Truth?  She's nothing like her name, that's for certain," the 
man said.  "More like one of those watermelons she grows every 
summer for the farmer's market -- small, round, and full o' 
juice.  But a nice little woman, for all her strange ways.  
Heard her car blow past late last night after being five days 
gone.  I figure she'll be in for milk and perishables some 
time soon."

************

Mulder took the covert approach and camouflaged his car among 
the brambles some distance from the road.  Then he slunk 
toward the cottage where a woman named Willow Wind Nightingale 
purportedly lived, gardened, and communed with the spirits.  

A dark blue sedan sat near the gate.  Bent forward, hand to 
his holster, he slipped inside the four-foot fence and hugged 
the house's exterior with his back.  It took only minutes to 
circumnavigate it, peering through each plastic-sheeted window 
in order to ascertain the level of risk.

Noise from a back bedroom drew him to that particular sill.  
Unmistakable, the tall cloaked form inside.  The swath of 
silver-gray hair, recognizable even in shadow and through 
winterizing plastic.  She rifled inside dresser drawers, 
sounding more like burglar than homeowner, with movements 
careless and hurried.

Creeping through the unlocked back door, he entered and 
tiptoed through the kitchen to a hallway.  At the open door of 
the bedroom he spoke up. 

"Surprised?"

Willow's head jerked toward him in shock, as expected.  He saw 
alarm flicker through her widened eyes.  But she doused that 
flame and recovered her composure with an adeptness that was 
far too professional for a rural Ohio psychic.  

"That could be one way to express it," she said evenly, 
maintaining the pretense.  "I suppose I should be flattered, 
not flummoxed by your arrival." 

"I just followed your lead."

"How so?"

"By showing up here unannounced."

She hesitated, appeared to be in no hurry to snap at his bait.  
"More's the pity.  Had I known you were coming, Agent Mulder, 
I would have tidied the place up and had the teapot warmed and 
ready."

The only things he noticed in actual disarray were the dresser 
drawers.  Yanked ajar, some were upended on the quilted 
bedspread and over the hardwood floor, contents strewn.  A 
pair of white granny underwear caught his eye, of parachute 
proportions, roomy enough to accommodate two of the woman 
standing frozen before him.  

The kitchen, he remembered, had smelled musty from disuse, the 
house on the chill side of warm.  Willow herself seemed 
preoccupied, almost on tenterhooks.  

Mulder caught her swift glance toward the window.

"Expecting company?  According to one of your neighbors, you 
just returned from a week-long trip," he countered with a 
surly grin.

"Since I keep strange hours, that observation is only 
partially correct.  And not at all reliable."

"My observations are usually right on the money."  

"Yours?  Please, I beg to differ."

Mulder moved deeper into the shadowed room, to a safe spot 
between door and window.  There the spare outside light 
illuminated Willow's face and some of the bed behind her.

"You can cut the crap at any time," he informed her.  "Just 
tell me where you hid the body."

"How helter-skelter we are."  She kept a watchful eye, he 
noticed, on what his hands did, before flickering to the 
window and back again.  "Rushing right to business, to expose 
the real nuts and bolts behind the illusion without a thought 
to consequences?  Are you certain this is what you want?"

Her coy mockery threw up little roadblocks of doubt that 
slowed his pace, made him think he should have done more pre-
work before confronting her.  All he had to go on was gut 
feeling and a few pieces of the bigger puzzle.  But they felt 
like significant pieces, nonetheless.  

Watching him, Willow gave an aggrieved sigh.  

"Tell me we're not dispensing with all the playful banter 
we've enjoyed thus far?  No more deep discussions about the 
paranormal?  No more unburdening of your soul over past pain 
and memories which continue to haunt you?  Not even a shared 
lamentation over Agent Scully's unfortunate end?"

"Shut up about it!"

Let her interpret his outburst and expression of grief as 
genuine, he willed.  Divert Willow from the truth by focusing 
on mental pictures of a small charred body and the way he'd 
fallen apart when he thought Scully was irretrievably lost to 
him.  Concentrate on anguish, on mental breakdown...  

"Speaking of which," she murmured, "I could go a long way in 
offering you comforts right now."

"All I want from you are answers."

"I had thought, since the events of last night, that you might 
need consolation after such a devastating loss.  You've 
limited yourself in the realm of sensuality, you know.  I'm 
quite prepared to offer you services other than psychic..." 

Her voice took on a sultry, smoky depth as shoulder movements 
deepened her cleavage.  He watched with blank loathing, knew 
she was playing him. 

"... In whatever way I could -- bar nothing -- to ease the 
pain of losing your dear friend and lover.  That proposal 
doesn't tempt you?"

"It disgusts me," Mulder shot back, "just like you do."  He 
pulled his Sig from its holster, leveling the nose at her.  
"Now where's the body?" 

"Of whose are you speaking, since you seem to believe there 
are two of them in question?"

"Will the real Willow Wind Nightingale please stand up?  
Except, thanks to you that's impossible now, isn't it?"

She rolled her eyes.  "And so persistent!  You think you've 
solved a great mystery.  A few variables fall into place; you 
manage to sleuth out my whereabouts, make conjectures.  Then 
here you are, swaggering into this house like a conquering 
hero, making demands and accusations, waving your gun.  In 
another moment I suppose you'll be handcuffing me in a pompous 
attempt to ensure cooperation."

A chill ran through him.  The fact that Willow spoke his 
thoughts aloud brought to mind Scully's warning about avoiding 
close proximity.  He realized that the extent of the woman's 
clairvoyant powers, if any, was still on murky ground.

"What did you do to me last night at Wilson Hall?  Drug me?  
Hex me?  Hit me with some kind of spell?  Or are you even 
capable of working magic like that?"

"Surely you aren't suggesting a demonstration of proof right 
here and now?"

His gaze swept the small room, searching for anything that 
might be construed as a weapon that could lend her strength or 
give her an edge.  In the corner, a two-sided shelf, candles, 
jars and paraphernalia.  Unlit candles everywhere, in fact.  
But cloaked in so much shadow, his quick glances told him 
little.

Except that a Samsonite suitcase sat near the door, packed and 
ready after an overnight stopover.  And its owner on a 
ransacking binge before bugging out...

"Back up," Mulder commanded.  "Sit on the edge of the bed 
where I can see you."  

He grabbed a wooden chair from the wall behind him, swiveled 
and straddled it, facing her with the door to his right.  
Settled his elbow against the back of the chair, gun still 
trained on his suspect. 

Willow complied with a swirl of her skirt and billowing wild 
hair.  It was now that Scully's input, her powers of 
observation would have been helpful to him.  They'd always 
made a good interrogative tag-team, one filling in the gaps 
left by the other, covering all the bases from analytic to 
far-fetched.

Then he squelched those thoughts, fearful that the true fact 
of her survival might blip across Willow's psychic radar.

"You used me," he accused her, "by trying to get inside my 
head whenever we talked.  By asking questions about my past, 
about my sister, as though you had a special insight into that 
part of my life.  Like you had some great revelation to impart 
from the psychic world."

"Deny you didn't feel comforted.  Your poor mind is still 
tortured with doubts about certain events in California.  The 
existence of walk-ins, for example, and why so many little 
children would appear to you that night.  Isn't it more 
palatable to believe that Samantha and the others -- even the 
unfortunate Amanda Carmichael -- had been spirited away by 
such benevolent beings to spare them a pain and horror no 
child or young person should experience?  So much simpler and 
convenient?"

"I wanted it over with... but it's not."  

She leaned forward, staring with a strange intensity.  "Be 
honest with yourself.  Weren't they magnificent to behold on 
that still, dark night?  Such a throng!  So innocent and 
happy, alive and smiling... Glowing like little angels in 
eternal starlight?"

His mouth felt dust-dry as a vision of that night in 
Victorville filled his mind.  Impossible now to recreate the 
exact sequence of events that made him separate from Scully 
and Piller.  How could they not notice his departure?  In 
retrospect, he wasn't certain he'd actually felt Piller's lost 
son take him by the hand, or remembered moving toward that 
luminescent field near the old nurse's house.

Nor could he swear, when a young teen he took for Samantha 
embraced him, that he'd held a solid, tangible form in his 
arms.  He'd reciprocated the hug without weighting all aspects 
of the experience.  Exhausted and entranced, he'd chosen the 
path of least resistance, helpless and desperate to believe in 
the magic that enveloped him.  

Swept up in the emotional catharsis of the moment, he'd 
hungered blindly for nothing more than the ease of release it 
offered.

And now?

"If you know the truth, I want it," he said, "whatever the 
cost."  

"Yet it may enslave you.  You could learn things you wish had 
stayed buried or remained a happy illusion.  A truth that will 
never set you free."

His throat tight, Mulder grimaced as he swallowed.  

"Try me," he said.

************

Toskala home base
10:52 AM

Awakening late, Scully sensed a shift in climate at the 
farmhouse that seemed independent of the haze outside.  A 
Chinook-like attentiveness greeted her from the moment she 
opened Tusk's bedroom door, clutching her small bag of 
toiletries, and began moving with slow, stiff-legged steps 
toward the bathroom. 

It stood to reason: On the very cusp of the mission their 
secret weapon had crapped out.  Turned faulty, defective, 
unreliable.  She was a wild card with an identifiable bent 
corner, and her chances of being shuffled hard and played to 
win were iffy at best.   

Mole, a perfect gentleman, slipped a steady hand under her 
elbow.  Fresh thick towels and washcloths, she saw, lay 
stacked like pancakes on a shelf beside the sink, which 
someone had taken pains to scour clean.  

"Dana, you want eggs?" a voice called from the kitchen when 
she emerged scrubbed and combed.  Footer, fellow sufferer, 
idled on the couch and acknowledged her slow gait with a shy 
smile of empathy.

Cricket tailed Scully back into Tusk's bedroom with something 
dark slung over one arm.  She also held out a pair of socks 
and the Dollar Store canvas shoes, devoid of graveyard grime.

"You better put these on," she prompted.  She indicated a two-
piece running suit from which the price tags still dangled.  A 
fashionable fleece set, its waist was soft elastic with a 
matching black pullover top and hood.  "They'll be a lot more 
comfortable over that bandage than those tight jeans you slept 
in.  I haven't had time to even wear 'em yet." 

This, from the sullen girl who'd bristled when Tusk insisted 
she relinquish a special pair of sneakers two nights before.  
The winds of acceptance had indeed changed, and as a result 
Scully felt a reluctant shift within herself as well.

"That's very generous of you," she said, genuine warmth in her 
voice.  

Cricket shrugged, but her dark eyes shone with pleasure at the 
praise.  "Tusk says you should get dressed and eat something.  
He's outside on the porch with Mason.  They want a group 
meeting soon."

"Is it cold out?"

"Not like yesterday; we might even get some rain later on."

The scrambled eggs were hot and well congealed, the toast 
crisp and buttered lightly.  Strawberry jam and a glass of 
orange juice on the side completed the repast.  With more than 
her usual appetite Scully swallowed a little bit of everything 
and felt strength return to her aching body.  

Outside she found Tusk standing, Mason seated, as they pored 
over a makeshift table.  Both men stubbed out partially burned 
cigarettes and turned toward her, blocking her view of it.  
Since that first day, none of them had actually smoked within 
the house while she was present.  

An order must have come down from the top.

"Fits like a charm," said Tusk, radiating open admiration.  He 
ambled forward, his slow gaze fanning her from top to bottom.  
"That was all Cricket's idea, by the way."  

She nodded, but looked toward Mason, who seemed too bushy-
tailed for a man who'd been up most of the night pulling 
impromptu disaster duty.  Without preamble Scully extended her 
hand toward him and felt it squeezed vigorously.  

"I appreciate everything you did last night, for me and for 
Mulder."  Her voice held clear, though her eyes misted.  "I 
can't begin to speculate what might have happened if you 
hadn't been there to intervene on our behalf.  So, thank you."

"Like Tusk says, we do our part and whatever else needs taking 
care of too," he said with a shrug, releasing her hand.  "But 
it wasn't all my doing -- the boss here walked me through most 
of it."

From behind she felt familiar fingers cup one shoulder.  
Tusk's, of course.  The contact was hesitant in this dawning 
of unspecified truce between them.  Yet, while his actions 
last night had seemed harsh to the point of chastisement, she 
couldn't deny that as a leader he'd kept his head throughout a 
series of calamities that had threatened to scuttle their 
rescue mission.

"I should have realized," she said, looking up over her 
shoulder toward him.  "My thanks to both of you then."

"How's that wound feeling this morning?  Word is, you were 
moving like an eighty-year old when you got up."

His hand remained, Scully conscious of small movements his 
thumb made over her fleece.  She chose her words with care, 
looking him straight in the eye.  "Let's just say I'll need a 
hell of a lot more than a few Tylenol 3 to get me through this 
evening.  If you're still counting on my participation, that 
is."

"No question."  His brows slumped in concern.  "What would 
help?"

"Toradol, maybe.  10 milligram tabs would be my first choice, 
taken with the Tylenol, but I can't imagine you've got 
anything that potent stashed in a drawer."

"You'd be surprised what pops up around here when the need 
arises," he quipped.  He thought a moment.  "But isn't Toradol 
most effective when given by deep injection?"

"Don't," she said slowly and emphatically, "even *think* about 
sticking anything into me." 

She heard a stifled snicker from Mason and saw Tusk's mouth 
edge into an appreciative grin, his eyes twinkling down at her 
with something akin to fascination.  Was she becoming inured 
to the ribald teasing around her by adding a reckless, half-
hearted riposte of her own?  Crossing another barrier into 
acceptance and familiarity?

"Woo, one for Dana," said Mason.

"Innuendo aside," she said pointedly, "I'm going to need some 
help."

"In a few minutes we'll go in and change that dressing of 
yours.  See what the real damage is.  After that..." Tusk 
leaned closer and gave her a little wink.  

She raised an eyebrow.  "After that *what*?"

"Well, Mason and I've got something to show you and the others 
that'll practically knock your socks off."

The group meeting Cricket had mentioned, no doubt.  Briefing.  
She stepped backward, the better to confront them both.  "If 
it's so crucial, then let's see it first.  What is it?"

"A kick-ass present I brought back," piped up Mason, his face 
beaming, "from your motel buddy, Glenn."  

************

Chancey, Ohio
11:15 AM

Seconds ticked by as Mulder and Willow stared at one another.  
After another glance to the window she broke silence.

"Just suppose," she murmured, narrowing her eyes, "your 
frantic quest for closure and grief over your mother's death 
led you so far astray, you became sloppy enough to grasp at 
anything that masqueraded for truth.  Foregoing examination, 
you grew too impatient to scrutinize the evidence before you."

Mulder shook his head, only faintly aware of a buzz in his 
ears.

"Tell me again what the prisoner Tencate said," demanded 
Willow.

"She said her son had been taken by walk-ins, like Amber Lynn.  
Like the all the others who were murdered --"

"Stop!"  

Mulder jumped.

"That was your first mistake, you see.  To accept such a claim 
without proper research goes against your own code of ethics 
and was insulting to your former partner as well.  Yet, 
seizing on that woman's pathetic story, you ran with it.  
Why?"

"Feel free to enlighten me," he sneered softly.

"A walk-in is indeed a spiritual being, but does much more 
than rescue a person from a situation of great danger."  
Willow savored her next words with a tiny lick to her lips.  
"Essentially, a walk-in takes up residence in a living, 
breathing host."

"Possession?"

As he said the word, a feeling of lassitude swept over his 
limbs and he forced himself to take a deep breath.  Not unlike 
the sensation he'd felt climbing the staircase in Wilson Hall, 
when the air felt thin and insufficient, his strength 
compromised each time he'd followed Willow upward into the 
shadows.  

The gun felt heavy as lead in his hand.

"Not quite; possession generally excludes invitation.  In the 
case of a walk-in, the physical body in question has a strong 
spiritual need for protection or guidance beyond that which 
its own resources can provide.  It welcomes the intervention 
of another, stronger soul."

"What are you implying?"

"The search for your sister," she said in exaggerated 
sepulchral tones, "is not over."

Mulder stared into Willow's face for a moment.  The he spat 
out a bitter laugh.  "What the hell do you know about it?"

"I can tell you this, though I shouldn't interfere: Tencate 
led you astray."

"How?"

"She failed to grasp that a person's physical body, even when 
controlled by a walk-in, remains in this world to continue 
living out its full life.  The original soul usually departs 
when the walk-in takes over, or it may choose to remain so the 
two souls co-exist, the newer one learning from the old.  
Absorbing its memories, habits, and life experiences."

"Not according to Harold Piller."

"Oh.  Well, then."  With coy deliberation Willow laced her 
long fingers together as though preparing to listen.  "By all 
means enlighten *me*."

"He said the missing children were taken by good spirits who 
knew what violent end each child would meet.  So the spirits, 
or walk-ins, intervened to transform their bodies into pure 
energy -- the starlight I saw in each case."

"A fairytale."

Did her words and smart-ass denials exacerbate this feeling of 
dizziness, so that his thought processes felt bound up in 
cotton, Mulder wondered?  The suspicion came, floated through 
his mind, that Willow might have drugged him again.  But that 
wasn't likely.  He also felt a tremendous need to vindicate 
that earnest little man who'd brought him to the brink of 
closure last year -- while trying to exorcise personal demons 
of his own.  

"Piller said that in almost every case the parents had a 
precognitive image of their child dead," Mulder argued. "Which 
corroborates the visions we saw individually during that case.  
Amber Lynn's mother, Tencate, Piller himself.  And me.  Just a 
few days ago Amanda Carmichael's mother had a vision of her 
daughter."

When she simply gazed at him, wholly unimpressed, he snarled, 
"Then what did I see in that field last year?" 
   
"Only you can answer that, Agent Mulder.  But I would venture 
to say it was a hallucination or a waking form of sleep 
paralysis.  Overcome by grief, hammered by questions and 
conflict, your brain conjured up what you needed to see on an 
emotional level.  Isn't that what your partner suggested to 
you?"

He hazarded a quick nod, yet felt his lower lip creep forward 
into a pout of denial.

"Then again -- perhaps you did observe a truly psychic 
phenomena, such as the signatures, or aural trails emanating 
from the souls whose survival was, and is, questionable."

"Why was my sister Samantha there?"  

"Rather than telling you not to seek any further, she may have 
been trying to assure you that she's still alive in this 
world.  In her own corporeal body."

"And you're a fucking liar!"

"Am I?"

"The nurse said Samantha disappeared from a locked room in the 
hospital.  Reconcile that!"

"I can't, if you choose to believe a deluded old woman who 
despite her Florence Nightingale heart--" Willow smiled 
indulgently "--and her good intentions, was overworked and 
sleep-starved for years in the ER.  Why is that so much easier 
to accept?"

"Harold Piller was there that night!  He can substantiate my 
experiences.  He even led me to April Air Force Base, where we 
saw Samantha's handprints in cement.  We found the house she'd 
lived in."

She offered a deprecating smile, as though dismissing a small 
child's imaginings, adding fuel to his fury. 

"I have Samantha's diary!  It was in another room during the 
seance Pillar held at the base.  Samantha wrote in it up to 
the time she was fourteen and I read the words with Scully 
afterward.  I told you about that on our drive back from 
Chillicothe." 
  
"You told me your sister had written that it was difficult for 
her to remember you.  And that hurt you deeply, more than you 
cared to admit."

Rendered mute by the haunting memory, a wave of the old 
disappointment threatened to engulf him.  Even Scully knew 
he'd been bruised when reading those lines aloud.  When all 
his hopes, struggles, and expectations had bottomed out, 
crashing down into a worthless heap that he'd conveniently 
stashed away.    

("Sometimes I think my memories were taken by the doctors but 
not all of them. I remember faces. I think I had a 
brother...")

"... 'With brown hair'," recited Willow, continuing the thread 
of his thoughts, "'who used to tease me. I hope someday he 
reads this and knows I wish I could see his face for real.'"  
She sighed.  "How pitiful!  I can see why a small part of you 
hoped the diary was inauthentic."

His head swam suddenly and his stomach lurched.  "Why would 
she write something like that?"

"It only proves that the new soul sharing her body, the walk-
in, was unfamiliar with her life experiences.  It's a learning 
process for both at the beginning, especially during the first 
few months... or however long the two souls make a contract to 
co-exist together."  

"That's bullshit!"

"She'd written, 'Running for my life, for the rest of my 
life.'  Perhaps she did that very thing: Hiding, growing into 
adulthood in a faraway place, guided and protected by the 
resources of the walk-in soul.  Which begs the question, where 
could your sister Samantha be now?"

"You're the one telling fairytales!  At least Piller can 
substantiate what he and I experienced together."

To Mulder's horror she threw back her head, mouth wide, and 
chortled at the ceiling.  

"Piller," she chuckled, "dear, dear Harold, is no longer a 
part of your particular equation.  Though, I admit, he 
performed admirably during the time he was with you and Agent 
Scully on the La Pierre case last year.  His gifts, such as 
they are, were well used and executed."

She appeared to float closer, her grin a ghastly taunt.  "But 
more importantly, Fox Mulder... you believed him.  Hook.  
Line.  And sinker."

"You're telling me," he gasped, weaving and disoriented, "that 
Piller was a fucking *plant*?"

"Assigned by people who would protect their version of the 
truth to ensure that you continue to believe in the lie.  Just 
as I have been, and my gifts have much more power, are more 
integral to this particular task.  Now, give me your hand!"

"Don't touch me!"

The truth, if it was truth, was a nightmare of inconsistency 
and cruel disillusionment.  He'd been flung back to square 
one, into a literal corner, where again he'd smacked his skull 
hard.  This case and how many others like it -- were they all 
trails sneaking back to a larger conspiracy of lies?  

Who else but a remnant syndicate would keep tabs on his 
present activities?  Would go to such lengths to steer him 
away from the truth? 

He faltered, felt like puking his guts.  It was more than a 
simple slam below the belt... It was what Willow and others 
had done to him all along, when he'd gotten too close to the 
edge.  Anything to perpetuate the deception and lure him 
astray-- 

Willow seemed to shoot forward as he fell to his knees.  
Wrestling the gun away, she seized his hands with both of hers 
in a clamping grip.  

Disoriented, he saw her gray eyes suddenly widen and glaze 
with incredulity.  He watched as she absorbed a double-whammy 
through the tactile medium of his skin and grit her teeth, 
face contorted.  Her nails dug into the palms of his hands 
until he groaned in pain.

"So she still lives!" she hissed.  "She's *alive* and you 
*knew* it all along... you BASTARD!"

In a miasma of kaleidoscopic color, succumbing to whatever 
witchcraft she'd put over him, Mulder slumped.  Helpless, he 
gave the hardwood floorboards an open-mouthed kiss as he sank 
forward.  Wetness, from blood or spit... he didn't know, cared 
even less.  

Strange visions of Scully in peril crawled through his 
consciousness, tore at his heart.  Again, all his fault.  
Where was his weapon?  Like in the Wilson Hall attic, his 
perceptions felt indistinct and he struggled to separate the 
dream from what was really happening...

Heavy thumps, like fists pounding, emanated from somewhere in 
the distance.  

He felt Willow push off his body with her full weight.  
Scrabbling quickly to her feet, her shoe cracked against his 
lolling head as she rushed away.  

The pain gave him a lightning-flash of clarity.  Fishing 
beside him, Mulder's fingers touched, then curled around one 
leg of the bed.  He felt only an all-consuming need for self-
preservation and hauled himself under it by increments, with 
slow, desperate bursts of energy... into the dust and dark, 
safely out of sight...

Echoes of Willow co-mingled with deeper male voices.  Then 
several dull bursts, the sounds of corn popping.  

Silencers...  

He made himself stay quiet, go sardine narrow in the shadows 
far under the bed.  Kept his mouth clamped shut as footfalls 
vibrated down the hall and virulent dreams of old Mrs. 
Peabody's truncated body overtook him.  

************
End of Chapter 16
Continued in Chapter 17