Charles Grant - The X-Files - Goblins

No, she thought; not after all this, no.

“You know,” said a rasping voice behind her, “I’m getting pretty good at this, don’t you think?”

Andrews wasn’t in the room when Dana returned, and she decided to take some of her own advice and scrub some of the afternoon away. Maybe some time alone would help her figure out the purpose of today’s attack. So little of it made any real sense. If it had been meant as intimidation, as a warning to stay away and drop the investigation — for whatever reason — it certainly wouldn’t work, and surely whoever was behind it knew that as well; if it had been meant to stop them permanently, that had failed, too, and she couldn’t convince herself that the shooter hadn’t been arming to kill.

“Unless,” she thought aloud, “he wasn’t an expert.”

She pushed a hand back through her hair, and rubbed the back of her neck. There had been a lot of wind, lots of leaves and things blowing around. Branches moving, targets moving. Plus, they had been shooting back.

So maybe, she thought, just maybe, they had gotten a little lucky.

That particular idea unnerved her more than anything. Especially when she realized that the shooter really could have killed her and Webber at practically any time before they had ducked into the trees.

They had been in the open far longer than Mulder.

But he hadn’t.

The more she thought about it, the more she believed he had only been trying, and succeeding, to pin them down. To take them out of the game as much as he could.

What he had actually been trying to do was put a bullet in Mulder.

The man at the Jefferson Memorial:

you have no protection, Mr. Mulder, you still have no protection.

“Oh, brother,” she whispered. “Oh, brother.”

Think. She needed a clear head to think this through, or she’d end up just as paranoid as her partner.

Once stripped and in the shower, however, it wasn’t the shooter she concentrated on — for some reason, she couldn’t stop thinking about Mulder’s other assailant. The explanations she had given him were more than likely correct, or at the very least, parameters. Which did not, under any circumstances, include anything like a goblin.

And yet…

She made a noise much like a growl.

And yet there had been times past when she had been forced to the unwelcome conclusion that explanations could very well be only rationalizations in disguise.

She growled again and turned away from the shower head, letting the hot water slam against her back and splash over her shoulders. Her eyes half-closed. Her breathing steadied as she willed the memory of gunfire to a safer distance.

Steam rose gently around her, condensing on the narrow pebble-glass window in the white-tiled wall, running down the translucent sliding door.

She felt nothing but the water.

She heard nothing but the water.

The perfect time, she thought suddenly, for good old Norman Bates to slip into the bathroom, knife held high and at the ready. Effectively deaf and vision blurred, lulled by the comfort of steam and heat, she wouldn’t know it was over until the end had begun; she wouldn’t know, because all she could see was a smeared shadow on the door.

Standing there.

Watching.

Biding its time.

The shadow, of course, was the drape of bath towels over their rack by the door.

She knew that.

No; she assumed that.

Her eyes closed briefly as she damned Mulder for sparking her imagination; nevertheless, she couldn’t stop herself from holding her breath to brace herself, and opening the shower door, just a little.

Just to be sure.

“Mulder, I swear I’m going to strangle you,” she whispered in relief and mild anger when she saw the towels, and the rack, and not a single place in the tiny room for anyone to hide.

The steam flowed over and around her, twisting in slow spectral ribbons, creating the momentary illusion she had stepped into a light fog.

She shivered.

The room was chilly.

And the steam that should have filled it flowed and twisted, because the bathroom door was open.

He didn’t want to sleep.

There was too much to do.

But the pain had finally ebbed, weariness taking its place, and he couldn’t keep his thoughts in an orderly line. They drifted, fading and dancing.

mulder, watch your back.

Patches of skin like snapshots, flashing too rapidly for him to focus on, barklike skin without the roughness of bark, without the texture, although he couldn’t really be sure because contact had been so brief.

Mulder

The voice was muffled by sleep and time, yet it sounded maddeningly familiar despite the fact that it belonged to no one he knew; a roughness here, too, and forced, as if the speaker, the goblin, was either suffering low-level pain or hadn’t yet gotten used to the voice that it had.

Watch your back.

And if it was true, that he had to watch his back, why hadn’t he been killed, like the others?

I don’t know, he answered, but the voice and the nightmare wouldn’t stop.

Rosemary couldn’t take it anymore. Her knees buckled, and she sagged weakly to the floor, her back against the elevator wall.

“Are you all right?”

Hoarse, painful to listen to.

She nodded.

“What happened?”

Gone, all gone, she thought; everything’s gone and Joseph will kill me and it’s gone, damnit, all gone.

“Dr. Elkhart, what’s wrong?”

She raised her head and gestured defeat.

“Dr. Elkhart, say something. You’re scaring me.”

“My dear,” she said with a brittle bitter laugh, “you have no idea what scared is.”

A shuffling, a shifting, a soft hand brushing across her ankle.

“Can I help?”

She made to shake her head, and stopped. She stared at the elevator door, seeing the two of them, reflections twisted out of recognition in the polished steel, and before long she felt her lips pull back into what might have been a smile.

“Yes,” she said at last. “Yes, dear, I think you can.”

Scully’s purse was on the floor between the toilet and the tub. She reached through the gap and fumbled it open, pulled out her gun, and straightened, staring intently at the bathroom door, still open about an inch. Her left hand shut the water off; her right wrist slid the shower door away.

Once on the bath mat, she grabbed a towel and wrapped it hastily around her; it was no protection at all, but it made her feel less vulnerable. Her teeth chattered and her lower Up quivered as the room’s chill raised a pattern of gooseflesh on her skin.

She switched off the light.

Water dripped too loudly from the shower head.

The only illumination in the outer room came from the brass lamp on the nightstand between the two beds, just as she had left it.

There was no sound or movement.

Using her left hand, she opened the door as slowly as she could, crouching low until she could slip over the threshold and duck behind the nearest bed. The gun barrel swept the room just ahead of her, but no one else was there.

Don’t assume, she told herself; never assume.

Feeling like a jerk now— never assume, Scully, never assume —she half-crawled around the footboard to be sure her visitor wasn’t hiding between the beds. Once satisfied she was indeed alone, she sat on the mattress and tried to remember if, maybe, she hadn’t left the bathroom door open by mistake; or maybe she had closed it, but the latch didn’t catch; or maybe Andrews had returned, heard the shower, and decided Scully didn’t need to be disturbed.

But if that were true, if she had heard the shower, why had she opened the door?