Charles Grant: Whirlwind

City boy.

They called him "city boy" at school, their lips curled, their voices sneering, unimpressed by his size or the glares that he gave them.

Yeah, sure. Like this wasn't a city, right? Like they didn't have traffic jams, right? Like people didn't shoot and stab and stomp each other here like they did in Chicago, right?

The dark moved.

The hissing moved.

"Paulie?"

He swayed to his feet, trying not to make too much noise: His hands wiped across his jeans and curled into fists. Now they had made him angry.

"Paulie, come on."

"Go back up," he ordered without turning around.

Something had definitely moved out there, probably a bunch of wiseass kids trying to creep toward him. He took a sideways step up the uneven bank; his foot nudged a short length of dead branch. Without taking his eyes off the dark, he reached down and picked it up.

"Paulie."

"Go up!" he snapped, louder than he'd intended. "Damnit, Patty."

Staring so hard made him dizzy. It was like trying to pin down the edges of a black fog.

His free hand rubbed his eyes quickly and hard, but nothing changed.

There just wasn't enough light.

This, he thought, is really dumb. Get your ass outta here before something happens.

An arm snaked over his shoulder, and he bit so hard on a yelp that he choked.

Patty's hand opened to show him the dim gleam of a gold cigarette lighter. He took it and half-turned, his expression demanding to know when she'd started smoking. He realized the ridiculous timing when she flashed him a not now, stupid grin and jerked her chin to turn him back around.

His own smile had no humor.

He shifted the branch club until it felt properly balanced. Then he took a bold step forward and squared his shoulders. "Listen, assholes, you want to get lost, you want to get hurt, your choice."

No one answered.

Only the hissing.

He held the lighter up and sparked it, squinting against the reach of the flame's faint yellow glow until his vision adjusted. There were shadows now that slid away and slid toward him as he raised the light over his head and moved his arm from side to side. The trees moved; the leaves turned gray; the bank took on contours that didn't exist.

"Hey!"

Another step.

"Hey!"

Another.

The breeze touched the back of his neck and twisted the flame to make the shadows writhe.

They kept coming, still whispering, and he gripped the club more tightly, angling it away from his leg, ready to swing at the first face that broke through the dark into the light. It wouldn't be the first time he smacked a homer with just one arm.

A low branch brushed leaves across his right cheek and shoulder before he could duck away.

He thought he heard Patty snap his name, but he wasn't sure. All sound had been reduced to his sneakers sliding over the ground, to the breeze rucked into the branches, and to the whispering.

He frowned.

No; it wasn't whispering.

It was, as he'd first thought, hissing. But strange. It wasn't like snakes at all, but like something… no, a lot of things brushing roughly over a rough surface.

Voices whispering.

He faltered, and licked his lips.

Okay, so maybe it wasn't people out there, and Patty said it probably wasn't snakes, and it sure wasn't the river.

So what the hell was it?

The breeze moved the leaves, and he looked up quickly, looked back and smiled.

That's what it was — someone dragging a branch along the ground. Leaves; the hissing was the leaves.

Growing louder.

Suddenly the lighter grew too hot to hold. He cursed soundlessly and let the flame die, whipping his hand back and forth to cool his fingers off, and the metal, so he could use it again in a hurry.

Tuning now was everything.

He would wait until the asshole was close enough, then he'd turn on the light and swing at the same time. The jerk would never know what hit him.

He listened, a corner of his mouth twitching, his body adjusting slightly so that he was almost in a baseball stance.

Batter up, he thought; you goddamn freaks.

Louder.

No footsteps yet, but that didn't matter.

He checked back, but couldn't see his sister; he looked ahead, and made out a faint shadow that, because of virtually absent light, seemed taller than it ought to be.

Louder.

Very loud.

City boy, he thought angrily, and flicked on the lighter.

He didn't swing,

His sister screamed.

He couldn't swing.

His sister shrieked.

So did Paulie,

Assistant Director Walter Skinner sat behind his desk, hands folded loosely in his lap, and stared absently at the ceiling for several seconds before lowering his gaze. He was not smiling. On the desk, in the center of the blotter, was an open folder. He looked at it disdainfully, shook his head once, and: ^ok off his wire-rimmed glasses. Thumb and forefinger massaged the bridge of his nose.

Mulder said nothing, and in the chair beside him, Scully's expression was perfectly noncommittal.

So far, the meeting hadn't gone well. The entire transcript of a six-month wiretap on a Mafia don in Pittsburgh had been misplaced.

and Mulder, arriving first, had walked straight into the teeth of the storm Skinner directed at his secretary and several red-faced agents. Mulder had been the target of the man's temper before, and he shipped hastily into the inner office with little more than a here I am nod.

Then he had committed the protocol error of taking a seat without being asked. When Skinner walked in, his face flushed with exasperation, Mulder wasn't quick enough to get to his feet, and the Assistant Director's curt greeting wouldn't have melted in a blast furnace.

It had been all downhill from there, even after Scully arrived, with Skinner raging quietly against those whose carelessness had imperiled an important investigation.

Mulder bore it all without comment.

At least the man wasn't raging against him for a change, which had not always been the case in the past.

Then, as now, the bone of contention between them was usually the X-Files.

The FBI's law enforcement mandate covered a multitude of federal crimes, from kidnapping to extortion, political assassination to bank robbery; it also permitted them to investigate local cases when local authorities asked them for assistance and the affair was such that it might be construed to be of potential federal interest, generally involving national security.

Not always, however.

Occasionally there were some cases that defied legal, sometimes rational, definition.

Cases that seemed to include instances of the paranormal, the inexplicable and bizarre, or the allegation that UFO activity was somehow involved.

X-Files.

They were Mulder's abiding, often single-minded, concern, and the core of his conviction that, X-File or not, the truth was not always as evident as it appeared to be. Nor was it always liberating or welcome.

But it was out there, and he was determined to find it.

And expose it.

The cost was immaterial; he had his reasons.

Skinner thumped a heavy hand on the folder. "Mulder…" He paused, the lighting reflecting off his glasses, banishing his eyes unnervingly until his head shifted. "Mulder, how in the name of heaven do you expect me to believe that this murderer is actually writing his name on his victims' chests?"

It was the tone more than the words that told him the Director was actually concerned about something else.

"I thought it was obvious, sir, once the patterns had been established."

Skinner stared at him for several seconds before he said, flatly, "Right."

A glance to Scully told Mulder he wasn't wrong about the Director's focus; it also told him he had somehow stepped on someone else's toes. Again. As usual.