White Darkness Matt R Austin Spoilers: None Keywords: Mulder/Scully friendship. Summary: Mulder and Scully travel to Haiti to investigate a series of brutal murders with a journal and the bodies their only leads. However, when the journal describes the killers to be zombies, Scully remains skeptical. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Scully surveyed the approaching shoreline with mixed emotions. It wasn't as if a holiday to Haiti was bad, but when you were following up a bizarre series of attacks and your partner was liable to blame the whole thing on aliens yet again, you learned to tread with caution. "What do you think we'll find out there?" Mulder looked up from a copy of some leatherbound tome he'd found rotting in a library somewhere and shrugged slightly. "I don't know. I mean, by the reports, we're dealing with fourteen personal assaults commited by an individual whose most disturbing characteristic is his smell, but if that was it-" "Why send for 'Spooky', huh? Tell me, are the little green men going to make an appearance? Or is this guy going to turn out to be another kidnapee?" "You're being unfair. This is a case : we look at the facts, we examine the evidence, and we find a theory to fit those facts that is backed by the evidence. Have you ever seen me break from that pattern." "Not in so many words. But I have seen your fixation on aliens get the better of your judgement every time-" Almost as the words emerged, she realised how it would make him feel. "Mulder, I'm sorry-" she tried. "It's okay. We've been on this boat for five hours and it's starting to get intrusive." he picked up his book and opened it reverently. "What is that, anyway?" "The journal of a French captain from his years in Haiti." "You read French?" "Enough to get by," he hedged. The speakers on the boat crackled into life and a heavily accented voice announced their names. "Mr Mulder and Ms. Scully to the forecastle, please. You have a visitor." Their visitor was dressed in a sharply creased police uniform and saluted with precision. He wore white gloves, shining bright against his coffee-coloured skin. "I'm assigned as your escort for your time on the island." "Fox Mulder, Dana Scully," Mulder said, extending his hand. The visitor did not extend his own. "Quite," he said, as if that ended the matter. For a moment, the silence hung heavily. Then, he seemed to lighten for a moment. "If you would permit me, I have been practising a magic trick for some time and would like to know if it is polished enough to pass the eyes of a pair of detectives." Mulder looked at Scully with a bemused expression. "Certainly," she put in. "Very well. Here, you see a deck of cards -" one of the cards flipped from his gloved hand and nestled in Scully's top pocket. She plucked it out and gave a small smile. "Queen of Hearts," the visitor said, white teeth sudden and shocking against black lips. "Neat. Is that the trick?" She handed him back the card. "No. Just a warm-up." He proceeded to rapidly shuffle the pack, cards flickering back-and-forth at considerable speed. Mulder watched intently. "Care to examine the pack, sir?" the visitor asked, finally. Mulder flicked through the pack, his finger idly tracing the sides to feel for markers. He could find none. He handed the pack back. "Very well. Here we have a pack of ordinary cards. They exist. The fact of their existence is not in doubt. They are solid objects of real matter. Take one at random, if you would, Mr Mulder." Mulder peeled off one of the cards. The Ace of Spades stared at him and he felt a superstitious rush go over him. He disregarded it : superstition might occasionally have its basis in fact, but unlucky cards were just ignorable. "Here is the deck. Shuffle the card into the deck, please." Mulder followed the instructions and returned the deck to their visitor. "Agent Scully, if you would look in your top pocket please?" Scully drew out a card. The Ace of spades was marked in the corner, but the cetral image was a hummingbird, caught in flight. She showed it to Mulder. "That is impressive," Mulder conceded, returning the card to their visitor. "Merely the first part. There are three. Part two comes thus-" He flung the deck into the air and amid the fluttering cards, a hummingbird dived and swooped. It came to rest on their visitor's shoulder. "A beautiful creature, is it not? So suited to the air. If forced into another environment, it would not survive. Or so it is thought." He took a clear fishbowl from his side. The sand at the bottom fluffed slightly as he put it down in front of him. "But the Hummingbird has a secret. It loves life so dearly that it can, under the right conditions, change its very form to another." So saying, he grasped the little creatured on his shoulder and forced it below the surface of the water. For a second, the displaced sand obscured their view, and when it cleared, the only thing visible was a rainbow coloured fish flitting around in agitation. Even Scully took in a sharp breath, shocked. And in that instant, their visitor flung himself into the water. The two agents rushed to the side of the boat, but all that was visible was a dolphin, leaping away from the wake. "We have immense problems with men like that," The ADC of the American Embassy explained. "Showmen, voodoo people. Obeah men, I think they call themselves. They dislike us intensely." He took the fishbowl and shook it gently, watching the fish. Then with a decisive movement he put his hand into the bowl and disturbed the sand. >From the bowl he drew the tiny, bedraggled corpse of the Hummingbird. "He broke its neck as he plunged it in, you see. The fish was just buried in the sand, and his activity roused it. And as for turning the card into a bird, you can certainly hide a trained hummingbird in your sleeve." He shook his head in sorrow. "We know they want us off. This is sacred land to them, you see. I suppose that's why we see something alarming in all this recent activity." Mulder looked at the little body on the forecastle. "You'd better tell us what's going on," he said. "They started about a month ago. A tourist was on her own, walking back to her hotel from a beach bar when she noticed an appaling smell. She described it as being like a roadkill in high summer. Then someone clubbed her hard on the back of the head and she broke both arms in a headlong tumble down a slope. She had a pretty bad fracture in back of the skull, too. That was just the start. A man wandered off to -er - relieve himself, and when they found him next morning he was in deep shock. There were toothmarks on him, as if something had been knawing at him. Human toothmarks. And he smelt bad, really bad. Like a roadkill in high summer, in fact. Always tourists, mostly americans, and always this smell and damage consistent with someone either a lot stronger than your average person or simply not caring how much damage they do to themselves." He paused. "The last one has gotten really bad. We haven't released the details yet, but two nights ago a young girl was on her way to a nightclub when she was grabbed. We wouldn't have been able to identify the body if it hadn't been for the clothes she was wearing with her nametags in. And several of her fingers had been bitten off, along with a few mouthfuls of flesh from the upper arms and legs." "Cannibalism?" "Hard to say. The teethmarks could be consistent with a monkey or something. But they do look like human." Scully shot a glance at Mulder to say, 'what have we gotten ourselves into?' "They're expecting us at the hospital in an hour. This dossier contains all the interviews. This is your hotel. I've got to run : there's a party of diplomats coming ashore in a minute. Hospital in one hour." So saying, he left at a run. "I have a feeling this is going to be worth a whole new section of the X-files all to itself..." Mulder ventured at last. ~*~*~ Mulder and Scully walked into the lobby of the hotel. Overhead a large electric fan was creaking as it turned. An elderly man watched them from a rocking chair as they walked across the lobby to the reception desk. The receptionist looked at them expectantly. "Mulder and Scully. Booked in advance," Mulder said before the silence could get really uncomfortable. The man nodded and hooked a single keyring from the rack. "There's only one key here," Scully said as he dumped it on the desk. "One Room, One key," the receptionist said flatly. Mulder leant over to Scully and whispered, "Don't make a fuss. I'll sleep on the couch." Scully nodded. This whole trip was becoming decidedly unpleasant. "Any messages?" The receptionist nodded and picked a thin envelope from the M-slot of the message boxes. He slid it wordlessly across the counter and turned away. Mulder opened the envelope. Out fell an ace of spades, with a hummingbird superimposed over the center. He looked at it for a moment. "I think someone wants us to drop this case, Scully," he said at length, showing her the card. He noticed her hand twitch towards her gun. She was tense. "Let's get our things into the room. I need to shower before I go anywhere," she said. ~*~*~ The room was large, cool, and definitely intended for a honeymoon couple. Scully fumed that the such a gigantic error could be made, but had more immediate concerns. She closed the door of the bathroom and, on discovering that there was no lock, put a chair under the handle. From the room outside, Mulder heard the scrape of chairlegs on the tiles and smiled, just a little. A second later, the sound of running water came clearly to him. He carefully opened the diary at the point he had reached and began to scan the lines. What he saw made him sit up straighter. He re-read the last passage again, trying to see if he'd mistranslated it somehow. Up to this point, the book had focussed on state occasions, dances, Amorous encounters, but here the journal took on a decidedly more severe tone. The handwriting was more precise, more militaristic, in comparison to the earlier free-flowing humour. The same person, but in a wildly different mood. He knocked loudly on the bathroom door. "Scully? Turn the water off and listen to this." "Mulder, 'this' had better be good." "It's from the journal. Listen : "11th August. There has been a foul air about the place for the last few days. We had thought that perhaps something had died in the nearby bushes, but tonight we discovered something different. Phillipe, our cook, was just preparing the morrow's bread when he thought he saw a man in the tall grass at the back of the building. We have had trouble in the past from the superstitious natives, who claim we are encamped on Sacred ground, and Phillipe thought it to be one of these. He went outside armed with a meat cleaver. He had been gone but a short while when there came the most appaling scream. When we rushed outside, we found Phillipe with his throat torn open in the manner of a wild beast brought down by a big cat. Some men swore they saw a man disappearing into the bushes. We chose not to pursue but instead retreated and called upon Father Courtrivon to place an immediate blessing on both the body and the house in general. "It was deep in the night when our mysterious visitor returned. One of the men on guard duty called out, but he too was dead when his companion reached him. His belly had been cut deeply with a sharp edge - with Phillipe's meat cleaver, indeed, for it was set beside the body. I ordered all the men inside and had the door sealed and splashed with holy water. "We heard noises as the night moved on, but were unsure wether man or animal was responsible. It was approaching two of the clock and we were all mightily tired when we heard the splintering of board from the front door. When we assembled in the hallway, Father Courtrivon muttering prayers with the speed of fear, we were ready for the breaking in of the door. We were not ready for what came across the threshold. "At some time, it might have been a man, but now it was rotting like something days dead. The stench was appaling. We fled from it. We were men of honour and valour, but in God's name we could not stand. Several of my men discharged muskets at point-blank range into the creature, but it seemed not to heed the damage. Before I could turn to flee, Two of my men were brought down by the thing. For hours, it hunted us through the house, until a small number of us managed to light a fire in the oil stores. The collapse of the house miight have killed the creature, but I took no chances and those of us who were left went at once to the quay and left this godforsaken isle with all speed." "So what do you infer from all that, Mulder?" "I'd say that either they didn't get it, and it's still around, or there were more than one of them." "Whatever 'they' are." "Do you know nothing about Haiti, Scully? Did our little brush with that guy this morning not tell you anything? Zombi, Scully." There was a noise that he couldn't identify for a moment. Then she gasped, and this time it was clear : she was laughing. "Coming to a hotel room near you!" she managed. "The Zombie! A Mulder case! Come on, Zombies are a myth! Next thing I know, you'll be telling me Ogres and Trolls are responsible for the sudden rise in drive-by shootings!" "It's Zombi, not Zombies. What's your theory?" "Some old tramp who hasn't washed in a month and is permanently crocked on alcohol would fit very neatly." "Cannibalism?" "You'd be surprised how deranged some tramps are. The ones that don't need confinement usually need therapy of some sort. Face it, Mulder, that story is no more authentic than that hummingbird trick. It's a ghost story, something he made up around the campfire and wrote down because it sounded good." "I am not convinced." "Niether am I. Now go away and let me finish my shower." Mulder gave up and lounged on the bed. Lying down gave him a thought and he looked around. "Scully?! We have a problem!" The chair scraped and Scully poked her head around the door, hair dripping. "You mean you have a problem, Mulder. I am having a shower. Are you familiar with the concept of personal hygeine?" Mulder grinned at her. "No couch," he said simply. He dodged the thrown sponge, but only just. ~*~*~ The town's hospital was a ramshackle affair, a collection of buildings from all ages. The Morgue was in a large prefabriacted affair, corrogated steel in faded green clashing with the victorian elegance of the main hospital wing behind it. The nervous-looking ADC met them. "This is the place. Are you quite sure you're up to this?" "Lead on, please." The ADC led them into the dark, cool chamber. The Morgue was cold and lit only by the harsh glare of the striplight. Scully watched as the drawer was hauled open. The smell of decay was almost overpowering. When the bodybag was unzipped she had to take a step back. Two days on a chilled slab couldn't generate that kind of smell. She knew what the ADC had meant by describing it as a roadkill in high summer. She forced herself to step to the drawer and examine the corpse. Nothing could prepare her for the reality. It was quite one thing, she realised, to hear that the flesh had been bitten, but another to see the great ripping tears in the skin and muscle. She fumbled for her pocket recorder and turned it on. "Subject : female caucasian, late teens. Medium build, about five-five. Extensive damage to upper arms and to thighs seemingly caused by biting. There is extensive bruising to the neck." The ADC leant close to the microphone. "X-rays reveal two cracked bones and physical exam indicates crushed trachea. Coroner's verdict : wrongful death." "In addition subject's clothes are ripped and torn. Indicative of either fight with or flight from assailant, possibly both." Mulder pointed at one of the tears in the jacket. "There's some discoloration at that end of the tear. Might be flakes of bark." The ADC nodded. "The majority of the damage to clothes seems to have been branches, stones and so forth. The arms of the jacket, though, were ripped off deliberately. No doubt about that watsoever." Scully looked hard at the body. "Can we turn the lights off for a minute?" She asked. The ADC looked at her strangely but complied. The striplight snapped off and the darkness flowed from the shadows to fill the room. "There's something in the wounds," Scully said, pointing. A faint, purplish phosphorescence gleamed in the bite-marks. The lights came back on and the ADC peered into the wounds. "I'll get the pathologist here immediately." The pathologist held up a petri dish. On it purplish spots were growing. "It's just a kind of phosphorescent lichen or moss. How it got in the wound is anyone's guess, but it's just spores. Nothing special. Sorry." Scully looked at the petri dish with mixed emotions. "Do you mind if we have a small sample of that?" Mulder asked, to break the silence. "Go ahead. It looks like it only grows on dead tissue, but be careful handling it anyway. Just to be safe." "Why did you want a sample of that stuff?" Scully asked. "I think it got there at the same time as the wounds were made. Which means either the area where she was found is full of this, or our mysterious assailant is carrying it around with him. So our next step is to go to the crimescene and take a look at the area for traces of this on the ground." ~*~*~ The trees were closely-packed and twisted in their growth. When Scully and Mulder finally reached the site, marked out with Haitian police tape, they were scratched and scraped in a dozen different places. They began to systematically search the site. It took about ten minutes to find what they were looking for. The moss was clearly in advanced growth. It was growing in little spots and lines on a patch of ground stained with the girl's blood. Mulder began to circle the marks and then stopped, suddenly. "Scully, look at it from this angle." Scully raised her eyebrows but did as he suggested. She saw nothing particular until Mulder put his foot down next to the mark. "It's a footprint, Scully. The oddest kind I've ever seen, but just a footprint. I think our mystery assailant is just dripping this gunk." Scully grabbed three pictures of the bizarre footprint. "Let's get out of here." ~*~*~ They returned to their hotel to find a message waiting. "The case couldn't be kept from the girl's parents anymore. They've insisted on immediate cremation. Sorry." The message was signed by the ADC from the embassy. "Couldn't we have had it declared a biohazard?" Scully fumed as she climbed the stairs to the room. "Not at that time. Now, it's gone. Let's be objective here : we still have photodocumentary evidence and samples. The girl's parents had every right to tend to her." The conversation ended when they reached their room and saw the contents. Sitting on the dresser, on top of Mulder's ancient book, was a small black top hat spattered with blood. Daubed on the walls, though, was a more obvious message that grabbed their attention. Smeared on the walls in excrement was the word "BEGONE". "Somebody definitely doesn't like us," Mulder managed. Mulder wasted no time. He checked the clip in his automatic and slipped it back into the holster. Then, he turned a proffesional eye to the door and examined the wood around the lock with an intensity born of fear. The door had not been forced. Scully hadn't missed a beat : she was already over at the window. "Negative," he called to her as he fumbled for a pen. "Same here. Whoever did this had a key." Mulder hooked a drawer open with his pen. "No noticable disturbance in my clothes." Scully had crossed the room to his side. He handed her the pen without comment. Tentatively, she hooked the plastic pull and slid the drawer open. Blood and feathers coated her clothes. "Why mine and not yours?" Mulder turned over the shirts on the top of his clothes. Underneath, a darkly glistening pool was evident. "Personal garments, Scully." He turned to the bathroom and pushed open the door with a toe. The room was like an abbatoir. Lying in the bath was a headless body of a white male. With a horrible sense of foreboding, he lifted the lid on the toilet. The face of the ADC stared up at him, the white bowl stained pink with his blood. "We've got to get to the Embassy." They made it to the embassy in less than ten minutes. The gatehouse was burning. In the grounds, they found a young man in a military uniform, steaming slighty in the cooling air. Most of his intestines were straggled out on the ground nearby. Both of them fought to keep from throwing up. A playing card fluttered to the ground near them, landed face up. The Ace of Spades glared at them : but the picture was of the Queen of Hearts. There was a smell in the air like a rotting roadkill. They exchanged glances and pushed onward to the main building. The power lines were down, the building swathed in darkness. With guns drawn, the pair entered. The lobby was full of bodies. The air stank of blood and meat and decay. They looked around- and at that moment there came a low, animal sound from the outside. "Move further in. Take the staircase up to the main office." Picking their way through the tense darkness in silence, they scrambled through the wreckage. Behind them, the front doors creaked open. Mulder caught a glimpse of something human-shaped in the door. He fired three shots. The faint outline didn't even flinch : he must have missed in the dark. Then the moon went behind a cloud and even that pale glow was gone. In the utter darkness, Scully tripped over something damp and fleshy and hit the floor. Her gun scattered away into the darkness. She searched for it on her hands and knees. Her fingers touched something wet and fleshy with a matted mass of bloodsoaked hair. The thing had a nose and was spilling soft grey tissue out of the dent in the back of it. Nearby she found a body which probably belonged to the head. She could not find her gun. Mulder came round the corner and whispered her name. "I've dropped my gun!" she called back, as loudly as she dared. "Leave it and let's-" he began. But the sound of something climbing the stairs behind them cut him off. They dived into the Main office. Another, female body lay inside. She was on her side, her head lolling at an unnatural angle. Mulder closed the door and they waited. Something came down the corridor. The repugnant stink of rotting meat came to them on the breeze under the doorway. Then something smashed into the door, which flew half open in a short arc that ended in Mulder's face. Drops of sticky dampness spattered against Scully. The gun in Mulder's hand flared twice and the thing outside seemed to back away. Scully slammed the door and shoved a desk against it, then grabbed for Mulder in the dark and hauled him bodily with her to the windows. The light from the burning gatehouse showed an already darkening bruise on his face and a freely-flowing bloody nose. She hit the fire alarm on the wall and used a chair to smash the window. "It's only one story," she told him, firmly. He nodded groggily and jumped, rapidly followed by her. She landed badly and felt her ankle twist alarmingly. They supported each other as far as the gatehouse. Scully tore off her jacket and wrapped it around a stick. She poked the improvised torch into the flames and then took off at a limping run for the motor pool. The gas cans were there, as she'd hoped. Mulder caught up with her a moment later and divined her purpose immediately. "Scully, no! All our evidence is in there!" "You've got what we left at the hotel." She picked up an emergency can and hauled it with her. Behind her, Mulder toppled one of the large drums and rolled it after her. She doused the lobby liberally with the fuel and rolled the barrel in as far as it would go. He fetched the torch from outside and handed it to her soundlessly. She put it by a spreading pool of gas and, leaning on each other, they ran. Behind them, the explosion turned the darkness into day. ~*~*~ Epilogue As they lay side by side in the hospital ward, Scully was finishing up her report on a laptop. The Haitian authorities had held them for forty-eight hours while they checked their FBI badges. It was, after all, a clear case of arson. The doctors at the hospital, however, confirmed the existence of the lichen. The hotel room, Mulder was unsurprised to find out, had been carefully stripped of all evidence of the moss. The attack site, even, had been cleaned of it. A nurse drew the curtains around Mulder and then stepped back. Mulder looked up in surprise. "Agent Mulder, I would advise you to consign this to the X-files immediately. Forget the things you witnessed out there." "I don't even know exactly what I witnessed out there." "In about three thousand BC, the area we now know as Haiti was hit by a meteor. The lichen you found may have come down on that rock, or it might have been changed by something on that rock. At any rate, it had certain properties that the Obeah men found useful. But then again, Agent Mulder... I don't think your superiors believe in the boogieman. So if I were you - I'd keep my mouth zipped up tight on that subject." Mulder sat in silence for a moment. "Will that ever happen again?" "Almost undoubtedly. But not in your lifetime. Appropriate measures are being taken." Mulder lay back. In a moment, the man was gone. The Nurse drew back the curtains and left in silence. Mulder reached over and pulled the plug on the laptop. "Hey!" Scully protested, "There are some things we shouldn't mess with, Scully." Fin.