Disclaimer in Section 0/7

January Sun 4/7:  Elvis
by Justin Glasser and Dawn Pares

***

It's dark.

But it's better, the dark is better than the pitiless glare of the
naked bulb.  The light shows him things he doesn't think he'll
be able to forget.  Things he would rather forget.  The dark is
better.

A yellow bar slides under the door, unrolling like a mat, and
he closes his eyes, tries to call the dark back.  He can already
hear her.  A new one.  She sounds so young . . . 

"Look what I brought for you.  Isn't she pretty?  She's just for
you."

Can't look a gift horse in the mouth, but you must look at the
gift.  That's the rule here.  Look at the gift and the gift looks
back. 

He cringes: the light is like a slap in the face, he tries to hide
his eyes, but the yellow dazzle spears behind his lids and he
feels a hand in his hair, jerking his head back and he has to
look at her.

Elvis has left the building.

She's shivering, her eyes are blacked, her nose is bleeding: fat
drops spatter on the warped boards of the floor.  She's the first
one he's seen bleed . . . before.  Before the others.  Before the
others had bled. The gift looks back.

There's a face on her t-shirt, her shirt has a face, a wide face,
with a helmet of hair and a splash of blood.  His own hair is
released and he hangs his head, but not before the girl is
turned for him, arranged like a mannequin.

Elvis has left the building.

"Look at her.  *Look* at her!  She's for you."  And then he
sees the hood, and he sees the way her hands whiten, how she
clutches at him, and he feels his gut lurch, feels the burn of
bile, hears her guttural click when she should be screaming.

Elvis has left the building.

***

The noise was so familiar that Dana Scully was out of bed and
through the connecting door before she was really awake.

She had heard it countless times before: the restless stirring,
the murmuring that followed no speech patterns, the
accumulation of small sounds that meant Mulder was having a
nightmare.  Sometimes she went in and woke him: sometimes
she went in and simply sat by the side of the bed, waiting for
him to wake, watching his body roll through the motions,
pulling the sheet back over him when he fell back into REM
sleep.  It had become just another feature of their relationship. 
Typical.

But what she saw when she pushed open the door with one
sleep-heavy hand, was anything but.

Skinner sat upright in his bed, face smothered in his hands,
making a low animal noise in the back of his throat.  Mulder
sat next to him.  One of Mulder's hands moved rapidly over
Skinner's back in patterns that Scully assumed were meant to
be soothing.  "I know how that feels," she thought, moving to
crouch by the edge of the bed.  

"Sir," she asked.  One of her hands rested on Skinner's blanket
covered knee.  "Sir, are you okay?"

"Nightmare," Mulder said. He seemed embarrassed. She didn't
blame him.  Sitting on your boss's bed while both of you were
in your underwear had to be a pretty embarrassing situation. 
She was glad for her men's cut pajamas.

"Sir?" She moved her hand on Skinner's forearm.  "Are you all
right?"

Skinner shrugged away from their hands like a horse will
shrug away a fly.  "I'm fine, Agent Scully.  It was a
nightmare." He got out of the far side of the bed, stalked to the
bathroom, and Scully noticed that his t-shirt was soaked
through in a triangle pattern over his shoulder blades.  She
tried not to notice his underwear.  Briefs.

Instead, she looked at Mulder, who still perched on the edge
of the bed.  He, too, was in his t-shirt and underwear
(*boxers* she noted, embarrassed), his hair poking up in crazy
patterns.  She did not reach up to smooth it.

He shrugged.  "I was asleep," he said.  "He started yelling."

She was about to ask what exactly Skinner had yelled when
the man himself returned with a clear plastic cup of water. 
"Was there something else you needed, Agent Scully?" he
asked, sounding more like her boss than any man in a pair of
briefs and a snug t-shirt had a right to.  She realized she was
still huddled at the edge of the mattress and leapt up before
she allowed herself to feel too much at home.

"What was it about?" she asked.  

He sighed, slumping back onto the bed.  "Why does this
matter?"

Scully looked to her partner for a second.  It    mattered because
they had never understood this man as anything other than
controlled.  As in *in* control.  Acted on, maybe, acted
against, definitely, but always--somehow--in control of
himself if nothing else.  

He had even been in control when he had woken up with a
dead woman in his bed, acting under his own impulses,
refusing to conform to their expectations, dodging their
questions . . . Skinner had controlled his response even in the
face of his impending divorce and an imminent murder charge.

She had doubted him then, wondered if her impression of
Skinner as strait-laced and wrapped tight was mistaken.  The
memory made her blush with shame. She had been wrong that
time, she knew now.  Skinner *was* straight-laced and
upstanding and virtuous and honorable and all of the other
clich‚s inspired by his starched and formidable form.  The
prostitute had been an anomaly on his part, one born of
loneliness, or isolation, or simply one too many scotches and a
sympathetic ear.  Skinner was everything she and Mulder had
believed him to be, and their realization that he had been
set-up with that prostitute had reassured them of Skinner's
innate reliability.  And now Mulder was right-something was
wrong with A.D. Skinner-and she needed to know what that
was.  

That's what she said to Mulder after they'd shut the door
between the two rooms, leaving Skinner to his bed.  

"Well, Mulder, you were right."

"Why am I not as happy about this as I should be?" He lay
prone on the opposite bed, his hands under his neck.

"On the plus side, at least we know it's nothing serious."  That
wasn't necessarily true.  Skinner had been taciturn after
returning to the bed.  He would not describe the dream and
had refused to answer specific questions until she had given
up, offering him no more assistance that another glass of
water.  He had refused that, too.

"Sure, " Mulder said, rolling onto his side and setting his feet
on the floor.  "You don't have to sleep with him."

Scully slid her legs underneath the anemic motel blanket,
watching as he stretched, fingertips brushing the ceiling. 

"You don't have to either, Mulder. Unless you're bucking for a
raise . . . " she deadpanned.

"Ha ha," he said, but she thought there was something like
panic in his eyes as he left the room. 

***  

Scully was yanked from sleep by the conviction that
everything was all wrong.  Her room was too light, too quiet. 
She could hear the rumble of the cleaning lady's cart as it
wheeled past her door.  Damn!

Late.

She leaned into Mulder's room.  Mulder and Skinner were two
softly breathing lumps, sleeping the solid sleep of the
exhausted.  She hated to wake them: like a toddler, Mulder
often became goofy or cranky without enough sleep. After last
night, she could only guess at what Skinner's response would
be.

"Mulder," she whispered.  He stirred.  "Mulder."

"'M'up," he said, and she knew he was telling the truth
because he threw back the blankets.

"We're late," she whispered at him, and pulled the connecting
door closed.  Skinner could be his problem.

They managed to be at the IHOP for Christley's breakfast
meeting before he and Robertson arrived.  Mulder's hair stuck
up damply: he had been forced to shower second because of
rank, he had told her while they were waiting for Skinner near
the car.  She could only guess how that conversation had gone. 


Skinner looked like he always looked, solid, stern.  His shirt
hardly had a crease in it.  Scully wondered where he had them
laundered: her shirts always seemed to get wrinkled on the
road.  He hadn't said a word to either of them except "good
morning" and he hardly acknowledged the bored aproned
waitress who slopped coffee in front of them.  It was
beginning to worry her.  She wondered if he was simply
embarrassed.

When Skinner left to use the rest room, Mulder, who'd been
biding his time, seized his opportunity.

"Well, well.  Late this morning, huh?  The boss must have
kept you up *all* night.  Adjoining rooms . . . People will talk,
Scully."

She knew it--goofy.

"I'm not the one who shared his hotel room, Mulder.  Any
thoughts on why the AD is being about as communicative as a
piece of furniture?"

Sighing, Mulder tipped creamer into his coffee. 

"Hey, he shared *my* room.  Chances are good he dreamed
again.  And he's not exactly Miss Congeniality on a good day." 
He shrugged and wrapped his long hands around his ceramic
mug.  "After last night, the less he says, the less likely it is
he'll lose his temper."

Scully felt her mouth soften.

"You think he's angry.  At you."

Mulder shook his head.

"I just don't think he appreciates an audience to his
vulnerability."

"And I don't think your friend Christley will appreciate the
silent treatment," she said, watching Christley and Robertson
climb out of their car in the window behind Mulder's head.

Mulder smiled a wolf's smile.

"Won't that be too bad?"

As much as Scully could understand Mulder's dislike of
Christley, who was blond and good looking in a bland way she
could only think of as "federal," and was also single-minded
and arrogant (*much like Mulder himself,* she thought,
feeling less than charitable), but she also wondered if it
wouldn't be wiser to try and stay on his good side.  It was his
case, after all.  Mulder wasn't doing them any favors by acting
like a prima donna.  Then again, she reflected when Christley's
pinched face came into view, no sense in making an annoying
bastard like Christley the exception to Mulder's rule.

They were saved the dubious pleasure of breakfasting with the
man by another break in the case.

"We got another corpse," he informed her, studiously ignoring
Mulder.  "Found it behind the grocery store about fifteen miles
from here."

"It's pretty bad, Mulder.  They've already ID'd the body.  She
was only a kid."  Robertson's expression told her just how bad. 
He looked as if he'd already seen his breakfast twice.

Mulder nodded, not looking up.  Skinner, returning from the
bathroom, caught Scully's eye.  He frowned.

His eyes were dark and unfocused, and a small vein throbbed
at his temple.  It was all she could do to keep from reaching
out to take his hand when he leaned down to pick up his coat
from the vinyl seat.  Surreptitiously, Scully brushed his fingers
with her own as she followed him out of the restaurant, and
his skin, while cool, was not the icy touch of a man in shock.

Nevertheless, once in the backseat of the rental, Skinner stared
dully out the window, wordless for the entire drive.  Scully
found herself stealing glances at him in the side view mirror,
and tried not to want to hold his hand.

***

Behind Food Lion Grocery Store
Bent, North Carolina 
11:13 am

Mulder felt his knees pop as he dropped into a crouch beside
the first corpse he had actually seen since he'd gotten to Ben,
North Carolina.    He hoped, without enthusiasm, that it would
also be the last.

The victim's hair had been combed out to lie around her head,
a dark halo.  She had been arranged, as the other victims had
been, like a body laid out for viewing at a funeral. Her arms
were folded across her t-shirt.

His partner knelt on one knee beside him, and sighed.  The
unseasonably warm weather had evaporated during the night:
Mulder could see Scully's  breath plume as she moved.  He
wondered if it smelled the same as it always did-coffee,
peppermint, Scully-or if it too had taken on the tang of the salt
air.  Bent was an hour from the beach, but the chilly humid air
still smelled of fish and salt and sand.  It reminded him of
home.  Well, the Vineyard, anyway.  

Mulder saw the dim grey of frost on the body near Scully's
practiced fingers-the victim had been here overnight, maybe,
or maybe just since early morning-but this girl's nose was
swollen, bulging grotesquely, her upper lip contused and
coated with blood. She had most certainly been alive when she
had been beaten.  Mulder watched as Scully checked the sides
of the girl's throat: red ligature marks standing out like an
amethyst necklace on the pale flesh.  He shuddered.

He felt more than heard Skinner approach, stopping just
behind him.  The A.D. murmured something, his voice
distracted, flat in Mulder's ear, but it was liminal-he couldn't
really tell what the AD had said.  He turned and looked up,
waiting for repetition, but Skinner merely kept his level gaze
on the corpse.

Mulder let it go, watching his partner lean over the body.

"What's up, Doc?"

Scully sighed.  "Probably the worst joke you've made in a long
time, Mulder." She hooked a finger in the wrist of her latex
glove and shucked it like a snake peeling.  "This is our guy. 
Same M.O., same markings across the palms.  This victim
seems to have put up more of a fight, but other than her nose
being broken, there's nothing new here," Scully asserted,
directing her final comments over his shoulder, toward
Skinner. 

"Mulder?"  Skinner asked.

Mulder looked down at the girl lying there, her arms folded
over her baggy t-shirt.  She looked like a joke. A rude
imitation of the peace that should come with death.  Even
Clyde Bruckman for all his cynicism had seemed quiet.  Still. 
This girl was still stirring.  Her life had been stolen. 

"Who found the body, Officer?" The senior officer, a heavy,
balding man, kept adjusting his gun belt, looking dazed.
Mulder had heard him confer with Christley, admitting that
he'd known her, Josie Wilkes, that he bowled with her dad in a
league. His partner, maybe twenty, with a buzzcut and a wispy
attempt at a mustache, answered smartly, although he looked
ill.

"I did, sir. I usually pass this way two or three times on a shift.
The guy--" The young man gulped noisily. "He couldna been
here until maybe seven or so. Real close to full daylight. Pretty
bold, you want my opinion."

Mulder ran a hand through his hair feeling it stiffen in the
salty wind.  There were times, like today, when even the cops
were pale at the crime scene, that Mulder was glad he was
red/green color blind. In his field work, he had read and heard
many descriptions of the color of blood: how red it was when
it first welled up, how it purpled when it dried. He was
familiar with the brownness and blackness of blood, but he
was fervently glad that he did not know its color as a shade,
because other colors could not therefore remind him of it. He
understood that hospital walls were green so that the
afterimage of bright arterial sprays would not haunt the
patients or the staff as ghostly stains. Tricks his own eyes
could not play on him. 

Small mercy. There wasn't even much blood. She'd definitely
been murdered somewhere else.

Killed. Jesus. This girl was so fucking *young*.

"Scully . . . do me a favor.  Move her arms."

Scully gave him her usual speculative look before lifting the
girl's hands and pushing her arms off her chest.

"Elvis has left the building," she reported.

Mulder gaped.  Elvis, he thought, and felt his mind stagger
over that simple phrase.  Elvis has left the building.

"I guess we're done here," Skinner said, letting Scully step
past him.

"Sir?" He began to turn, but Skinner's hand gripped his bicep
and Skinner's voice buzzed in his ear. 

"Finish up with Christley and meet me outside."

"Sir?" he repeated, but Skinner brushed past him, his mouth a
tight line.  Mulder watched his boss stride through the grey
air, his dark coat flailing like crow's wings behind him. 
Something had rattled his cage, that was certain.  For a
moment, Mulder just stood there, watching Skinner's
retreating back. 

Elvis has left the building

***

He came around the corner and Skinner grabbed his wrist in a
grip so tight Mulder swore he could hear the bones grind
together.

"Did you take care of Christley?"

Mulder shook his head.  "I sent Scully.  Sir, what you said
back there, near the body-"

"Agent Mulder . . ." Skinner's voice sounded as if it were
being ground in his throat.  "I . . . I'm not sure how to explain
this to you . . . "

Suddenly, Mulder no longer felt the grip on his wrist, or the
cold snap of air in his nostrils.  Suddenly all he could see was
A.D. Skinner.  Suddenly, he understood.  "You knew that she
had Elvis on her shirt.  You said it, before Scully moved her."

"Mulder, I'm not  . . . ."

"You have information about the case."

Skinner looked down at his shoes.  "I'm not sure."

Mulder leaned in.  "Tell me."

Skinner shot him an annoyed glance. 

"I recognized it, Mulder.  Her shirt."

"You've seen it before?"

Skinner shook his head, frustrated.  He was on the edge,
Mulder knew, inches away from shutting down and shutting
up, but he would answer this question, maybe only this one. 
"From my dream, Mulder.  I saw it in my dream."

Mulder felt his mouth fall open.  

"Sir?" he said.

"I know how it sounds, Agent Mulder.  But I also know what I
saw.  I dreamed of that shirt last night."

"Do you think--"

"Do I think that my other dreams may also be related to the
case?" Skinner tucked his fists into the pockets of his coat. 
His shoulders slumped.  "I don't know."

"Other dreams?"

Skinner looked at him, his expression that of a child that has
been caught in a lie.  Then he nodded.  "They seem to be
connected."

"Have you ever seen the shirt before?"

Skinner shook his head, his face grim in the cold.  "I thought
they were just nightmares."

Unable to answer, Mulder reached out and put a steadying
hand on his boss's shoulder.  He was torn between the desire
to grill Skinner about the dream and the feeling that he should
be kinder here, different, but Skinner just squinted at him until
he removed his hand.  Mulder watched as Skinner walked
away, through the stray refuse in front of the dumpster.  He
looked just as he always did, head up, shoulders back, a calm
and solid presence at the scene of the crime.  He looked no
different, but he was having nightmares, screaming into the
darkness, watching women die.  

Mulder sighed, shoving his hands in his pockets to warm
them.  Either A.D. Skinner was flying down to North Carolina
to kill young women in his spare time, or he had just described
a precognitive dream about the victims of a serial killer. 
Mulder wasn't sure which answer he preferred.
.
***end 4/7***
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