Clarke House
by Laura Castellano

Rated R for a bit of language

Disclaimer: Not mine, never were, never will be

Archive: Sure

Category: A haunting and some good old-fashioned MT.

Spoilers: None that matter much.  Blink and you'll miss the
ones for Bad Blood and Chinga.

Timeline: Mid fifth season

Summary: "...silence lay steadily against the wood and 
stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone."




From 'The Haunting of Hill House'
by Shirley Jackson
copyright 1959

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under
conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are
supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by
itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had
stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more.
Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors
were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay
steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and
whatever walked there, walked alone.




From the 'Clarke County Gazette'
October 18, 1943

CLARKE HOUSE VACANT AGAIN

The Jeremiah Clarke house went on the market again
yesterday, this time for a greatly reduced price.  The
Runnels family, who lived there only six months after
purchasing it early this year, decided to sell the house
after the father obtained a job in California.  When asked
the reason for the unusually low asking price, Mr. Runnels
would only say that the family was desperate to sell.

The house, built by county founder Jeremiah Clarke in 1870,
is in a state of disrepair.  Sarah Runnels, youngest
daughter of the vacating family, reportedly told her best
friend that the house "didn't like" repairs.  Apparently Mr.
Runnels attempted on more than one occasion to paint the
outside of the house, but the paint "wouldn't stick."  Mr.
Runnels dismissed this allegation, stating simply that the
weather had not been right for painting.

Built by county founder Jeremiah Clarke in 1870, the house
is still known as the Clarke House although it has had
numerous owners since the last of the Clarke family passed
away in 1929.

The Clarkes came to Texas from Tennessee shortly after the
Civil War, and settled the area which would soon come to be
known as Clarke's Station. The town of Clarke's Station
later became Clarkeston, and the surrounding area was
incorporated into Clarke County in the late 1880's.



From the 'Clarke County Gazette'
June 3, 1955

Local Boys Missing

Two young Clarkeston boys, Abel Johnson, 13, and Frederick
Mays, 12, have not been seen since yesterday morning.
According to Henrietta Mays, Frederick's mother, the boys
had been riding their bicycles to the town library when they
disappeared.  When Frederick did not come home for dinner,
the mother became concerned and telephoned the library.  The
librarian, Miss Conrad, reported that the boys had not been
in that day.

A full-scale search has been launched by the Sheriff to find
the missing children.


From the 'Clarke County Gazette'
June 4, 1955

Missing Boys' Bicycles Found

Two bicycles, identified by Roger Johnson as belong to his
son, Abel and Frederick Mays, have been located in a ditch
near the old Clarke house.  A search of the surrounding
area, including the vacant home, revealed nothing
to suggest foul play, but both the Johnson and Mays families
insist their sons would not have run away from home.
Henrietta Mays declared repeatedly that the boys had been
"swallowed up" by the Clarke house.  Local authorities
dismissed her rantings as hysteria.

The Clarke house, which has been empty for two years,
has gained a reputation among the local children as being
haunted.  Some of the stories about the house stem from the
fact that since Marybell Clarke, the last surviving member of
the Clarke family, died in 1929, the house has had a long
string of owners, none of whom have remained for long.

Jason Garn, the realtor who is handling the sale of the
home, stated that the poor condition of the home is the
reason for the lack of long-term owners, not spooks.

"There's nothing in that house except dust and some old
pieces of broken furniture," he insisted.  "I've been inside
many times myself, and not once have I seen a ghost.  The
problem is, it would take so much money to repair the place
that it isn't a good bargain.  I don't know why the current
owners don't simply have it torn down."


From the 'Clarke County Gazette'
August 7, 1955

Clarke House Slated for Demolition

The Jeremiah Clarke home, vacant since 1952 and in a sad
state of disrepair, will be demolished next week.  Jason
Garn, the realtor handling the unsuccessful sale of the
house, applauded the decision by the owner.

"I've said for years it ought to come down," he stated.
"The land is worth more as a commercial property, anyway."

There has still been no sign of the two boys who went
missing earlier this summer.  Their bicycles were found near
the house, but no other evidence has turned up.




From 'Stories of Genuine Hauntings'
by Alexander Roberts
copyright 1986

There is no question that the Clarke House in north eastern
Texas is a genuine haunting.  Many people have disappeared
there over the years, including two teenaged boys in 1955. A
young man hitchhiking home from college was reportedly
dropped near the house by a trucker in 1982 and never seen
again.  His backpack was found on the dilapidated front
porch of the Clarke House.  In 1955, just after the two kids
disappeared, the place was supposed to be torn down.  Plans
for razing it were abandoned when one of the workers went
inside and never returned.  A thorough search of the
premises turned up nothing, but the other men were so
spooked by the incident that they quit that very day. Word
apparently spread quickly, and it became nearly impossible
to find another crew to demolish the house.  Once the owner
heard what had happened, he immediately changed his plans
and ordered the house left alone.

People who lived there, many of them difficult to locate
now--the house has been vacant since 1952--are loathe to
talk about their experiences.  One woman, Sarah Runnels
Greenup, was willing the speak to me, and the story she
told, while abbreviated, was nonetheless chilling.

"My family lived in the Clarke House when I was just a
little girl, about nine," she revealed.  "It was me, my
parents and my three older brothers.  My parents are dead
now, and believe me, none of my brothers will talk to you or
anyone else about the house.  The oldest, Joe, insists that
nothing ever happened there at all, but that's just him
being in denial.  Believe me, plenty happened, and Joe knows
it.

"The house was a mess--Mother could never seem to keep it
clean, no matter how hard she tried, and my mother was a
wonderful housekeeper.  It seemed no sooner would she sweep
and mop the floors than there would be mud tracked across
them.  She always yelled at my brothers and me for doing it,
but it wasn't us."

Her face tightens a bit as she continues to talk, and I
remain silent, letting her memories come as they will.

"I remember once my daddy tried to paint the outside of the
house.  It was awful, you know--the paint all chipped and
bad looking.  I don't think it had been painted since it was
new.  Or maybe someone had tried and the house didn't like
it.  I know when my daddy tried to paint, the paint just
wouldn't stick to the house.  It slid off, almost like the
boards were coated with Teflon or something, you know what I
mean?  Just slid right off.  My father tried every
trick known to man at the time to prepare the wood for
painting, but nothing worked.  The house just didn't want to
be painted."

"I understand your father told the newspaper--"

"He said it wasn't the right time of year to paint," she
interrupts, "but that isn't the truth.  It was nice spring
weather, warm and sunny, not wet or cold at all.  It was the
house."

I showed her a photo of the house, taken recently with my
own camera.  The wooden posts supporting the balcony had
been replaced by brick pillars, but the balcony still leaned
forward slightly--it was as if the pillars had been too
short and whoever had put them there had decided not to
correct the problem.

Or as if the house itself was biting down on the newness with
the dirty white teeth of the balcony rail, protesting any
renovation to its original form.

"There," Mrs. Greenup says, tapping her fingernail on an
upstairs window in the photo.  "That was my bedroom."

"Did anything unusual ever happen in there?" I ask.

She fixes me with a bland stare, and I can see the panic of
memory just below the surface.

"There was no place in that house that things didn't happen."



Agent Fox Mulder
Federal Bureau of Investigation
X-Files Division
March 23, 1998

Dear Agent Mulder:

I am writing to request your assistance in locating my twin
brother, Alexander Roberts.  He disappeared over two months
ago while investigating a supposedly haunted house he had
once written about.  My brother is an author, and although
the Clarke House was the subject of a chapter in a book he
published several years ago, he has never been able to shake
his fascination with the place.

I know he had visited the house several times, and while he
reported to me that he had felt a "presence" in the place,
he never spotted any happenings that could be called
paranormal.  I am not at all certain I believe in these
things, but the fact remains that my brother is missing
after a visit to this house.  Local authorities have been of
little or no assistance to me, and when I finally contacted
the FBI on my own, I was referred to you.

I would very much appreciate your help in this matter.  I
feel certain something terrible has happened to my brother,
but no one wants to listen to me.  If you are interested in
learning more about this case, please contact me at the
number listed below.

Yours,

Alexis Roberts Stephens



Mulder read over the letter a second time, then once more as
his partner entered the office.

"What've you got?" she asked curiously, heading immediately
for the coffee maker.  "Anything good?"

"Maybe," he replied, still studying the paper.  "A guy's
gone missing, and his twin sister has asked us to help
locate him."

Scully sipped the hot liquid, closing her eyes in bliss as
it slid down her throat.  "Why us?  Why not the missing
persons division?"

"Apparently she was referred directly to our office," he
said, swinging around in his chair to face her.  "Hope you
brought your cowboy boots."

Scully stared.  "No."

Mulder smiled.

"No way, Mulder.  I'm on a plane for California tomorrow
evening, and I am *not* going to Texas instead.  And if you
tell me this case has anything at all to do with
vampires..."

"Not vampires, Scully.  Ghosts."

Scully was unamused.  "Ghosts," she repeated flatly.

"A genuine haunted house, in fact."

Mulder turned to his bookcase, rooting through the shelves
until he came up with a battered soft-cover book, which he
held up for her inspection.

"'Stories of Genuine Hauntings,'" she read aloud.
The small smile that played around her lips belied her
impatient tone.  This was so like Mulder.  Dangle a spook or
specter in front of him and he was off like a shot to
investigate, with his loyal partner trailing behind.  Well
damn it, she resolved, not this time.  I'm officially on
vacation as of five o'clock tomorrow afternoon, and I am not
spending my time off chasing ghosts. "Come on, Mulder,
you're not going to tell me someone read that book, went off
to investigate a haunted house, and got swallowed up by the
ghoulies and ghosties, are you?"

"Not a reader, Scully.  The author."

Scully took the book from him and flipped through it
casually.  Taking note of the copyright date, she raised an
eyebrow.  "The author disappeared while researching a book
published twelve years ago?"

"Not at all.  The author disappeared two months ago while
visiting a house he wrote about twelve years ago.  According
to his twin sister, the house in question had always held a
weird fascination for him."

He handed Scully the letter, and she read it over quickly.
"That's really odd," she commented.

"Most of our cases are."

"No, I don't mean the letter.  I'm talking about the fact
that the house mentioned in the letter--the Clarke House--is
the subject of the chapter your book naturally falls open
to.  It's as if you've read this chapter a hundred times."

"Or more."

She glanced up at him, surprised.

"You see, Scully," he told her softly, "the Clarke House has
always held a weird fascination for me, as well."

There was a strange silence, which she broke, finally, by
saying, "I don't think I understand."

"Look," he offered, taking the book from her hands and
flipping to a section of black and white photographs
somewhere in the middle.  "Look at the photo of the Clarke
House."

Scully examined the picture.

"Yeah?  So?"

"So doesn't it...I don't know, doesn't it *draw* you in some
way?  Doesn't it capture the imagination?"

"Mulder, it's just a house.  I'll admit it's creepy looking,
but a good coat of paint would go a long way toward
eliminating--"

"It won't hold paint."

"What?"

"Various owners over the years have tried to make repairs,
including painting the exterior.  The paint reportedly slid
off the house and wouldn't stick.  It was supposed to be
demolished in the 'fifties, but when one of the workers went
inside and never came out again, the other men quit.  The
owner decided to leave the place standing."

Scully sighed, handing him back both the book and the
letter.  "Mulder, there are thousand possible explanations
for what might have happened to that man, completely
rational ones.  Naturally I sympathize with Mrs...."  She
searched the letter for the name.

"Stephens," he supplied.

"Stephens," she acknowledged, "but I don't see anything here
that makes this case an X-file.  As far as I can tell, it's
a simple missing persons case."

"I'd still like to look into it."

"Fine, Mulder, you look into it.  I'm going to California."

"You're missing a great opportunity, Scully."

"I'll live with the consequences."

And that, Mulder concluded, was that.  Once Scully made up
her mind, it was set in stone.


They shared a cab to the airport the next afternoon.

"What did Skinner say when you requested time off so
unexpectedly?"

"He told me I probably wouldn't get much work done with you
out of the office anyway," Mulder replied.  "I think I'm
offended."

"I think he's right," she contradicted, amused.  "Remember
what happened when I tried to take a vacation to Maine?"

"And that was only a few weeks ago.  Scully, I think we
should talk about this constant need of yours to get away."

She fixed him with a stern glare.  "Mulder, the very fact
that I did *not* get away--that I did, in fact, get caught
up in a case--"

"Aha! So you admit it!" he crowed triumphantly.

"--is the reason I am so determined to get away now," she
continued, ignoring his apparent victory.  Until now she'd
refused to acknowledge that she'd been actually working on a
case during that recent weekend.

"So you'd really rather visit with your brother than
investigate a genuine haunted house with me?" he asked after
they'd paid the cab and retrieved their luggage.  "You're
missing a golden opportunity to prove the existence of the
paranormal."

"Mulder, haunted houses are fiction.  I doubt you'll find
anything more frightening than rats in that old place."

He made a face.  "Rats?"

"Rats and spiders."

"Okay then, you're missing a prime opportunity to prove me
wrong."  He juggled his suitcase and wiggled his eyebrows
enticingly.  "C'mon, Scully, whaddya say?  Why not ditch old
brother Bill and let's have a vacation for two in scenic,
historic Clarke County, Texas."

"They're calling your flight," she said dryly.

"Right.  Well..."  Goodbyes were always awkward, and Mulder
hated them.  He wanted to give her a quick kiss on the cheek
but didn't quite dare in front of this many spectators.
Instead, he settled for a squeeze of her shoulder.

"Be careful, Mulder," she told him seriously.  "I mean it.
I wish you wouldn't go down there alone.  You always seem to
get into trouble on your own."

Mulder frowned.  "I'm not incompetent, Scully," he objected.
"I am a responsible human being."

"I didn't say you were incompetent, Mulder.  I'd tend to
classify you as accident-prone."

"Besides," he continued, "what kind of trouble could I get 
into with rats and spiders?"

"Have you ever heard of rabies, Mulder?"

"All right, all right, I'll be careful.  And you do the
same.  I hear the--"  He started to say "the ghosts in
California" but that would bring back memories of
Emily...and Melissa.  "I hear the rats and spiders in
California are some of the worst in the nation."

Scully just smiled and waved pointedly at him as the last
call for his flight was announced.  He gave another awkward
wave and ran for the plane.



Mulder had flown into Dallas/Ft. Worth airport and rented a
car.  The drive north had been restful, mostly--except for
that semi that had parked on his tail for the ten miles of
construction they'd had to crawl through.  By the time
Mulder reached the town of Clarkeston, the afternoon had
waned.

Excellent, he thought with some amusement.  What better way
to catch your first glimpse of a haunted house than in the
dim glow of twilight?

His amusement disappeared rapidly when the house itself came
into view.  Temporarily losing all sense of humor, Mulder
took his foot off the gas and allowed the car to roll to a
stop.

"Damn," he muttered beneath his breath, staring at the
decaying monstrosity.

It was everything he'd read about and more.

Much more.

Perhaps *too* much more.

There was something very wrong here.

After a full two minutes of staring at the peeling paint,
loose shingles and off-kilter aspect that were the most
noticeable features of Clarke House, Mulder shook his head
as if to clear it.

"Of course there's something wrong," he told himself aloud.
"It's *haunted*."

He could almost hear the words of dissent Scully would have
spoken, had she been there, but Mulder was a little
surprised to find that, after his first glimpse, there was
no doubt in his mind that the house was indeed haunted.

No way a place could look like that and *not* be haunted, he
thought.  Wouldn't be surprised to see spooks flying in and
out the upper windows right now.

There were, of course, no spooks flying in and out the upper
windows--no visible ones anyway--but Mulder felt certain
that the local police would no doubt be passing by at some
point.  Since he was, in truth, trespassing on the property,
he thought it might be expedient to hide his car.  He felt
certain Skinner would be unamused to receive a telephone
call notifying him of the arrest of one of his agents.

The driveway, or at least what was left of the driveway--it
was marked with rocks and growth but was still clearly
visible--curved naturally around toward the back of the
house.  Switching on the car's headlights against the
rapidly gathering gloom, Mulder followed it, and grinned in
satisfaction when he saw an empty garage--obviously a later
addition to the house--standing open.  He pulled the car
inside, grabbed his bag off the back seat, and stepped
out.

The atmosphere was decidedly creepy, but he shook off the
feeling.  It would be too easy to be drawn into his
imagination in a place like this.  He'd have to be careful,
and try to employ some of the scientific thought Scully
would use if she had accompanied him.

For just a moment--a split second really--he felt a flash of
genuine anger at her for deserting him. "What the hell?" he
asked aloud, shocked by the foreign sensation.  Oh, there
were plenty of times he felt negative emotions concerning
Scully, without a doubt.  Frustration, yes, irritation, hell
yes--actual, deep anger...no.

After concealing his car with the garage door, which was
surprisingly easy to lower, considering it appeared as
dilapidated as the house, Mulder walked toward the house,
taking in his surroundings with interest.

Although it was late March--springtime in north Texas--and
trees were already showing a return to their summer
brilliance, those surrounding the Clarke house seemed as
dead as the structure itself.  There were a few blades of
green grass bravely attempting to push their way up through
the blanket of dead leaves that covered the ground, but very
few.  It was as if the newborn blades found their strength
overpowered by the age and wisdom of the fallen leaves.

Crunching through the leaves, Mulder climbed the two rickety
steps that led to the back door.  He pulled open a screen
door that wasn't quite falling off his hinges, and with
little optimism, twisted the doorknob.  He'd brought his
lockpick kit, just in case, but it seemed luck was on his
side.  The door opened easily.

Mulder grinned at the standard creak the hinges emitted, and
his grin grew even wider at the sight of the kitchen table.
It was so cliche it was classic.

What appeared to be a modest meal covered the table,
which was set with four places.  There was a pot of what
might have once been baked beans in the center of the table.
Next to it sat an iron skillet containing six pieces of
petrified cornbread.  There was brown liquid on the
blue-checkered tablecloth, which he finally realized must be
spilled liquid from the beans.  Mulder supposed at one time the
bean liquid had been a light brown, probably even aromatic
and flavorful, but now it resembled nothing so much as dried
blood.

He wondered how many books about haunted houses he'd read
where the murdered family's supposed last meal remained on
the table, forever waiting for those who would never
consume it.

The thought of cliches made him remember the door, and he
swung around, expecting to find it had closed silently
behind him, perhaps even to find he was locked inside.  To
his surprise, it stood open, exactly as he'd left it a few
minutes earlier.

"Not much of a haunted house if the doors don't even close
on their own," he muttered, walking over and shutting it
himself.

With the door closed, the light inside the house was
somewhat dimmer, so Mulder pulled out his flashlight and
shone it around the room.  The kitchen appeared to be
standard, old fashioned, furnished with all the necessities
but none of the amenities.  The sink was old, chipped
porcelain--not a double sink, but one large one, like
the one in which Mulder remembered his grandmother washing
dishes.  There were no cupboards beneath it, and the water
pipes--rusted through in one spot--were clearly visible.

Beside the sink was a wooden table that he supposed might
have been used, at one time, for food preparation.  Another
memory flashed through his mind, of his grandmother kneading
bread dough on a table very similar, when he realized with a
start that he could actually *smell* fresh-baked bread.
This was no memory.  The aroma was real.

Sniffing deliberately, as if to locate where the fresh bread
was baking in this long-empty kitchen, Mulder continued his
examination of the room.  A large cupboard stood in one
corner, its doors standing open.  He crossed to investigate
and discovered nothing more interesting than rodent
droppings.  To his left, along the opposite wall, stood an
old fashioned stove, not the kind you had to light a fire
in, not *that* old-fashioned, but the kind you had to get
down on your knees and use a match to light the oven.  The
kind where the oven door opened to the side, like a clothes
dryer, instead of downward the way they did now.  The four
iron burners on top looked like giant black widow spiders in
the gloom.

"Rats and spiders," he told himself confidently.  "Nothing
more dangerous than that."  He ignored the little voice in
his head reminding him that black widow spiders were
poisonous, and that there had been more than one successful
horror movie where rats devoured humans.  "Well," he asked,
comforted by the sound of his own voice, as if craving human
contact after all, "what next?"

The living room, his subconscious answered as he reached for
the door next to the stove, but instead, Mulder found
himself in a formal dining room.  Moth-eaten velvet drapes
covered the windows, plunging this room into almost total
darkness, and what had once probably been nicely fringed
edges now lay in rotted tatters on the floor. The large
dining room table was surrounded by eight chairs, their
rotting velvet covers apparently matching the drapes. Before
each place was a formal dinner setting.  This time, there
was no decayed food present.

Walking through the dining room to the door at the other
end, Mulder at last found himself in what appeared to be a
formal living room.  The sofa and chairs looked
French-style, but Mulder couldn't have said if they were
Louis XIV or Napoleonic.  In fact, he wasn't even sure they
were French--they just looked like the impression he got in
his mind when he thought of French furniture.  Again, the
furniture and windows were covered in rotted velvet.

"The Clarkes were nothing if not consistent," he murmured.

The huge brick fireplace still contained the charred remains
of a fire, and on the mantle was the requisite clock, its
hands set to twelve.

This place was beginning to look more and more like some
kind of haunted house a group of kids had set up for
Halloween.  In fact, he wondered briefly if it had been just
that, several months earlier and if he was simply seeing the
remnants.

On the other hand, Alexander Roberts was still missing.

Something in the fireplace caught his eye, and Mulder knelt
beside it, shining the flashlight directly at the remains of
the fire.  There, in the very back--something white.  He
reached for it, then drew back his hand quickly.

The ashes, dark, grey and without a single glowing ember,
were hot.

"What the hell?" he demanded aloud again, thinking it should
become his mantra.

Grabbing a poker from the set of fireplace tools
conveniently placed, Mulder fished through the ashes,
drawing the object towards himself carefully.  It
appeared to be a tiny baby shoe, covered in soot except for
the toe, which was what had caught his eye.

Mulder picked up the shoe to examine it, and nearly screamed
when the desiccated foot fell out of it as he turned it
over.  He stared at the object on the floor in revulsion.
It was apparently the foot of the previous owner of the
shoe.  The left foot.  It had been severed--only severed
wasn't the right word, he realized with growing horror.  The
remains of the tiny foot appeared to have been chewed from
its leg.

After regaining his equilibrium, Mulder fished around in the
ashes some more, looking for further evidence of a body, but
there was none.  He bagged the tiny foot and shoe.

Trespassing or not, it was time to call in the local
authorities.  Mulder felt in his pocket for his cell phone,
then remembered he'd left it in the car on the portable
charger.

He lay the evidence bag on the mantle, swinging the
flashlight around for one final look at the room, and
started back the way he had come.  When he reached the
kitchen, he stood totally still for a moment, staring at the
table in disbelief.

If the meal had simply disappeared, he could have chalked it
up to a number of things, including his own active
imagination, but instead...it appeared the meal on the table
had been consumed.  Plates that had been formerly clean now
contained crumbs from the cornbread, the ladle had been
removed from the bean pot and now lay to one side, staining
the tablecloth still further with the blood-like stains and,
most confusing of all, there was now a half-empty gallon of
milk beside it.

Mulder knew with a certainty that the milk had not been
there before.  He slipped on one of the latex gloves he
carried in his pocket, and picked it up.  Out of force of
habit, Mulder sniffed the milk in the open jug, and nearly
gagged.  It was soured.  More than that, it was practically
cottage cheese.  It looked and smelled like milk that had
been left sitting at room temperature for days.

The oddest thing was that the door to the kitchen had
remained partially ajar during his time in the next room,
and Mulder knew, without a doubt, that there had been no
human presence in the kitchen while he investigated the
fireplace.  There was no way four people could have sat at
this table, consumed beans and cornbread and clabbered milk
within the few minutes he'd been absent, without making a
single sound.

On the other hand, he reminded himself, he'd been pretty
preoccupied with what he'd found in the living room.  It was
possible--highly unlikely but *possible*, he admitted--that
one person could have stolen into the room and made it look
like a family of four had eaten a meal.

On the heels of that thought came another, a memory of his
old partner Jerry Lamana, who had inadvertently sent an
evidence bag to the cleaners, almost costing a judge his
life and seriously hampering Jerry's own career.  "Stupid!"
he berated himself, remembering the bag he'd left on the
mantle.  "How could you do that?"

He rushed back to the living room, half expecting to find
the bag gone, and breathed a sigh of relief when he caught
sight of it right where he'd left it.  His relief was
short-lived.  When he reached the bag and shone the
flashlight fully on it, Mulder could see that it was empty.

"Dammit!" he said under his breath, looking quickly around
the room.  He was alone.  Mulder picked up the bag and
examined it, and his heart nearly stopped when he realized
it was perfectly clean.

The shoe had been covered with ash, and the foot had even
crumbled a bit when he'd picked it up, but the bag showed no
signs of having ever held such dirty contents.  In fact, it
didn't appear to have ever been used at all.

"What is going on?" Mulder demanded aloud.  It occurred to
him that he was doing quite a bit of talking to himself.
Naturally, a guy who lives alone is going to speak to the
room now and then, he thought, but this was becoming
completely out of character for him.

"As long as you don't start answering yourself, Mulder," he
mumbled, and then thought uncomfortably that that was
exactly what he'd just done.

Again, he thought he ought to retrieve his phone.  Even if
he didn't call the local police--because there was no way in
hell he would ever convince them there had actually been a
desiccated infant's foot in the fireplace--he should at
least call Scully and tell her what was happening.

He immediately changed his mind, feeling his anger at her
surge again, more intensely than before.  This time he
didn't question it, which should have felt odd to him but
didn't.  She was his partner.  She should have been here.
She could visit her brother any time.  The fact that his
thoughts were a bit irrational, that she in fact *couldn't*
visit her brother "any time" didn't cross his mind.

Mulder had a digital camera in his bag, and he wanted to
take it out and shoot some pictures, but first, he decided,
he'd better explore the rest of the house and make sure he
was really alone.  Because he could believe--almost--that
someone had changed the kitchen during the five minutes he'd
been in the living room, but there was no way he could
accept that someone had stolen the evidence bag containing
the shoe and replaced it with a clean one during the minute
and a half he'd spent staring at the eaten meal and sniffing
a milk jug.

Which left him with one solution that he could clearly see.
Ghosts.

He could hear Scully refuting this in the back of his mind,
could almost see her rolling her eyes, and this only made
him angrier.

"Bitch," he said clearly, not even pausing this time to be
shocked.



From 'Hauntings and Their Effects on Human Behavior'
by Grant Stallings, Ph.D.
page 137

'It is clear then, from evidence I have already presented, that
spirits, or presences as they may be known, can have a
direct effect not only on human behavior but on our very
thoughts of that behavior.  The best example I have
discovered of this is Clarke House in rural northeast Texas.

'The Garman family, who lived in the house for a period of
only three months just after World War II, are an excellent
example of this theory.  The father, Frank Garman, had just
returned from the war when he moved his wife and son into
the house.  The son, who is still living but refused me an
interview, gave reports to friends and neighbors that his
father had become abusive towards him and his mother.

'Although he gave only vague clues, since attitudes of the
time did not allow for the open discussion of such matters,
it was impossible for his friends and his teacher at school
to miss the fact that Fred often sported black eyes or other
bruises.  One day, shortly before he moved out of the school
district, his teacher notified the authorities that the boy
had arrived at school with his arm in a cast.  Local police,
upon investigation, learned the boy had fallen down the
stairs at his home the previous day and broken the arm.  No
charges were filed, because the family was united in their
claim that the incident had been an accident, but there was
suspicion in the neighborhood that the father had caused the
injury.  (See transcript of interview with teacher Peggy
Farmer.)

After the wife ended up in the hospital, again claiming the
injuries had been caused by a fall down the stairs in her
home, the family moved from Clarke House.  Subsequent
investigations of public records from their previous and
future towns of residence reveal no signs of abuse.
Apparently the behavior only occurred while the family lived
in Clarke House.

When asked by a friend why they were moving after such a
short time in the house, the Garmans would only say the
house "didn't suit" them, but Rina Garman's letters to her
sister reveal a much more sinister reason.

"Frank has started to hit me now," she wrote just a month
before they vacated Clarke House.  "At first, when he was so
mean in what he said, I figured it was because of what he'd
seen overseas.  Then he started doing little things like
pushing me around or grabbing my arm too tight.  Last night
he slapped me so hard I still have the mark on my face.  At
least he's not hurting Freddy.  I can stand it as long as
it's just me." (Letter written to Mable Stone, sister of
Celia Garman, August 17, 1946, given to the author in 1973
by Mrs. Stone.)


Other than a tiny bathroom, tucked away under the stairs and
obviously added sometime after the house was built, the
entire downstairs consisted of the three rooms he'd already
seen.  Mulder now turned his attention to the stairs.

They curved gracefully up one wall between the living room
and dining room, wide and sweeping for the first three
steps, then narrowing, though still comfortably wide.  He
shone his flashlight into the gloom at the top, and seeing
nothing but a few spider webs criss-crossing the way, tested
the bottom step.  It seemed sound.

Making his way carefully, planting each foot deliberately
and testing the integrity of the wood before putting his
full weight on it, Mulder had gotten almost halfway up the
stairs when he paused.  He cocked his head, listening
carefully--he could swear he'd heard footsteps in the
kitchen.

Drawing his weapon, he turned slowly.  "Federal Agent," he
called firmly.  "Is anyone there?"

Naturally, there was no answer.  Mulder was about to descend
the stairs to investigate when a streak of--a streak of
*white* was the only way he could later describe it,
although it looked nothing like what he imagined a
traditional ghost would look--rushed past him.  He felt a
freezing cold blast of wind brush his body as it passed.

Mulder turned, staring up into the darkness where the thing
had disappeared, his mouth open in astonishment.  If anyone
had asked him, before he arrived, if he believed Clarke
House to be haunted, he would have answered, "Probably."
Had anyone demanded to know whether or not he expected to
see a supernatural entity, his honest answer would have to
have been, "Probably not."

Before he was able to fully process what had just happened,
another series of footsteps--and they were footsteps, of
that he was now certain--crossed the kitchen floor.  He
turned again, this time to descend.  The sound of the
kitchen door slamming suddenly took him by surprise, and
Mulder's foot slipped.

Rather than tumbling down the stairs, he slid down, scraping
his back and butt along the time-roughened wood.  His right
foot, the one that had betrayed him, caught between two of
the railings supporting the banister and twisted, painfully
enough to cause him to cry out.  He landed on his
side, bruising his ribs and banging his head against the
floor, his ankle still caught between the rails.

Lying quietly on the floor for a minute, Mulder took swift
inventory: breathing hurt but wasn't difficult, which
indicated broken ribs were unlikely, his arms were
uninjured, his hands slightly scraped.  The biggest problem
was his right ankle, but although twisting it was
excruciating, it was possible.  His head ached where he'd
banged it, but he hadn't lost consciousness.  Altogether not
a bad accident--at least not for Mulder.

He'd dropped his gun, which had skidded across the floor,
and his flashlight.  Managing to locate the light, he
switched it on and was surprised to find it still worked.
His weapon wasn't so easy to locate, but after a few
minutes he found it lodged against the sofa.

Pulling himself carefully to his feet, Mulder tested his
weight on his injured ankle.  He bit his lip hard at the
shooting pain, but after a few seconds of determined
movement of the injured joint, decided he could walk.

Now he turned his attention back to the kitchen, and the
noise that had startled him.  The slamming of the kitchen
door, it had sounded like, although Mulder reminded himself
that the kitchen door had already been closed--he had closed
it himself.  So there was no way it could slam, unless
someone else had opened it while he was in the adjacent
room, in which case they'd have had to be exceptionally
quiet.

His mind was, for the moment, ignoring the whiteness that
had flashed past him on the stairs.

Mulder entered the kitchen, examining the door, which was
indeed tightly shut.  Then he naturally turned his attention
to the kitchen table, wondering idly if he would find it set
for coffee and dessert this time.  Instead, it was
completely cleared of both dishes and food.

He swung his flashlight beam toward the sink and spotted the
dishes, neatly washed and stacked on a drain board.

"Why can't my apartment have a ghost that does dishes?" he
wondered aloud.

He limped across to the kitchen door and looked outside, but
was unable to see much.  His flashlight didn't seem to
penetrate the now complete darkness, but as far as he could
tell, there was no evidence of anyone else having been there
recently.  Not in the last half hour, anyway.  Mulder shut
the door and, surprised to find what appeared to be a fairly
sturdy lock, twisted it firmly into place. That would at
least make it more difficult for any human visitors to gain
entrance, he thought.

When he limped through the living room to the
stairs, he barely acknowledged that there was now a blazing
fire in the fireplace.


The upper floor of Clarke House consisted of a small square
foyer at the top of the stairs, off of which opened four
doors leading to identical sized bedrooms.  Examining them
one by one, Mulder noted that they were furnished in a style
similar to downstairs: velvet drapes and velvet bedspreads,
all rotting.  One of the beds was neatly made up, the other
three appeared to have been recently slept in.  The
bedspread on one was askew, and the other two had their
covers thrown carelessly back, as if the occupant had just
risen.  Mulder had a suspicion that if he looked in the
rooms again five minutes from now, the beds would all be
made.

Deciding to leave further investigation of the second floor
for daylight, he backed out of the fourth bedroom.  As he
turned to locate the stairs, the beam of his flashlight
illuminated another set of stairs tucked into the far corner
of the foyer.  He crossed to them and shined the beam
upwards, but the stairs twisted almost immediately and all
he could see was a blank wall.  He decided they must lead to
an attic.

There was no banister here, only the wall itself to hang on
to for support, and for a minute Mulder hesitated.  His
ankle was still very sore, and he knew he should go
downstairs, lie on the sofa and prop it up.  Maybe that fire
was still lit.  On the other hand, the lure of the
mysterious, narrow staircase was strong.  In the end, it won
out.  He knew there was no way he'd sleep without knowing
what lay above him.  Not that he expected to sleep anyway.

The staircase was barely wide enough for Mulder to climb
without turning sideways.  He ducked his head instinctively,
but soon realized he could stand up straight without a
problem.  Favoring his sprained ankle and testing each step
carefully, as before, Mulder climbed to the top.

He expected the stairs to end in an open attic, but when he
reached the top of the stairs, after three turns, he was met
by a solid oak door, securely locked.

Now he had a choice to make--climb down two flights of
stairs to where he'd left his bag, dig out his lockpick set,
climb back up two flights of stairs on his rapidly-swelling
ankle, and try to get past the door, or...wait until
morning.  At the thought of sleep, Mulder realized he was
truly weary, and was surprised upon glancing at his watch to
see that it was just after seven.  It was so dark in the
house, and he was so tired, he thought it must be nearing
midnight.

With one last fruitless rattle of the doorknob, Mulder
turned around carefully in the narrow passage and began to
make his way down.  It took him nearly ten minutes to
traverse both flights of stairs--for some reason, the nearer
to the ground floor he came, the worse the pain in his ankle
grew.  By the time he placed his good left foot on the
living room floor, Mulder was unable to support any weight
at all on the right.  He hopped over to the sofa with the
aid of the banister and a convenient chair, and sank down
gratefully.

He expected clouds of dust to engulf him, but the furniture
seemed surprisingly clean.

"Maybe the same ghost who does the dishes also dusts," he
remarked to the room.

At his comment, the fire, which had still been blazing
brightly, abruptly went out.  Apparently the ghost of the
nineteenth century Martha Stewart was unamused at his humor.

"Sorry," he offered to the emptiness by way of apology, but
the fire did not return.

Mulder had dropped his backpack and sleeping bag near the
sofa, and stretching out an arm, he was able to snag the
strap on the sleeping bag.  He dragged it over to himself,
unrolled it carelessly, and threw it over his rapidly
chilling body.  He intended to stay awake as long as
possible, to see if he could observe any other paranormal
phenomena, but as soon as he was covered he again felt the
heaviness in his eyelids that had struck him upstairs.  It
was similar to the lethargy he felt when he took cold
medicine--no matter how badly he might want to stay awake,
his eyelids would turn to lead, and as soon as he lay down
he'd be out.

Mulder forced them open for one more glance at the
fireplace, and just had time to think it odd that, in spite
of the fact that the fire had burned for probably half an
hour, the room was no warmer than when he'd first entered.

In fact, it was much, much colder.




He awoke feeling refreshed.  This in itself was an oddity;
that he could sleep soundly at any time was something for
which to be grateful, but the idea that he could do so in a
haunted house was incredible.  Mulder raised his wrist and
pushed the button that illuminated his digital watch.  It
showed twelve minutes after ten.

According to his watch, he'd slept for nearly fifteen hours.

Tossing back the sleeping bag and sitting up on the sofa,
Mulder tested his ankle against the floor.  It still hurt,
that much was definite, but the swelling seemed to have gone
down.  When he tried to rise, he found that by breathing
deeply and gradually increasing the weight he placed on that
foot, he was able to stand on his own.

Mulder shuffled slowly across the floor to the window facing
the front of the house.  He pushed the velvet
draperies aside and looked out upon a grey day.  It was
raining heavily, and he realized suddenly that he hadn't
even been able to hear the rain falling until now.

He thought of his cell phone, lying on the seat of his
rental car, still connected to the portable charger.  He
really ought to give Scully a call.

On the other hand, why should he stumble through a downpour
on an injured ankle just to call someone who hadn't cared
enough about him to come along in the first place?  If she'd
been here last night, she could have wrapped his ankle or
something...at the very least talked him into lying down
instead of making that stupid trip up two flights of stairs.
In fact, if she'd been here to watch her partner's back, the
way she should have been, the entire incident would probably
have been avoided.

Screw her, then.  Let her wonder why he didn't call.  Let
her worry about him, for a change.

Still staring out at the rain, Mulder was unconscious of the
malicious grin that now spread across his face.

Suddenly, screwing Scully seemed like a fine plan.

Turning away from the window, he noticed the fire was
blazing away in the fireplace again.  He wandered over to
it and warmed his hands, wondering if the table was set for
breakfast.  On the other hand, if all the occupants of the
house had to offer for a meal was dried beans and petrified
cornbread, he'd pass.  Desiccated infant foot sounded more
appetizing by far.

Mulder instantly snapped out of his reverie, shocked by what
had just crossed his mind.  Where had a thought like *that*
come from?

The fire went out at once.

Without it, the room was plunged into near-total darkness
again, so Mulder opened the rotting drapes.  The daylight
that managed to find its way in under the balcony outside
was dim and grey, but it did help to illuminate the room a
bit.  It was better than nothing, and his flashlight
batteries were already showing signs of running low.  Which
was weird as hell, because he'd replaced them just before
leaving home.

Damned store must have sold him old batteries.

He was hungry, but instead of checking the kitchen for
breakfast or searching the now darkened fireplace for more
baby parts, he sat down on the sofa and rooted through his
pack.  Mulder extracted a couple of granola bars and a
bottle of water and consumed them with gusto, tossing the
paper into the fireplace.  Maybe the next time it lit
itself, Clarke House would oblige him by taking care of his
trash.

After his breakfast, he rooted again through his backpack
and found his lockpick set.  It was time to find out what
was hiding in the attic.

Maybe it was that white thing that had flashed past him on
the stairs.

Mulder didn't stop to question whether or not he really
wanted to encounter such an entity, he just made his way
purposefully, if slowly, up the stairs.

By the time he reached the door to the attic, he was
breathing heavily, as if he'd run several miles.  He
couldn't account for the tiredness that swept through his
body, considering how long he'd slept, but for some reason
he was unsurprised to find the door standing open.

"Okay," he said resignedly, and climbed the last three
stairs to enter the attic.

There were no velvet curtains here, only bare windows
letting in the dim light.  The room itself was devoid of
furniture--devoid of dust as well, he noticed--but there was
writing on one wall.  Crossing to where the wallpaper was
peeling away, Mulder lifted a piece of it so he could read
what it said.

"God grante that she lie stille," he quoted aloud.  "Hey, I
read that story when I was a kid!  Although if I remember
correctly, it was about possession, not a haunted house.
You're slipping."

He wasn't sure what he meant by that statement--was it a
comment on his own memory, or that of the house?--but he
didn't bother questioning it at the time.

It was cold up here, and seeing nothing out of the
ordinary--except for that odd sentence written on the
wall--(was it written in blood?  He leaned in for a closer
look and was almost disappointed to find it looked more like
a black permanent marker had been used)--Mulder decided to
check out the second floor more thoroughly.  He'd barely
seen it last night.

The door behind him was closed, although he'd left it open
wide, and again, Mulder was unsurprised.  At least it hadn't
locked him in the attic, he thought as he twisted the knob
and the door opened easily.  That could have been awkward,
considering all his food and water was downstairs.

Although as neat as the ghosts who haunted Clarke House
seemed to be, it might have been put away in a kitchen
cupboard by now, he thought, and giggled at the idea.
Giggled like a girl, he realized, which brought back
memories of a discussion with Scully concerning a girlie
scream.  Wondering what a girlie scream would sound like
coming from him, Mulder opened his mouth and tried for one.

"Eek!" he murmured in a high-pitched voice, but it didn't
feel quite right.  He tried again.  "Eeeeek!"  This time he
managed to increase the volume, but it still didn't have
that shrill fingernail-on-a-blackboard quality he was
attempting to achieve.  He drew in a deep breath and made
one last effort.  "Eeeeeeeek!" he screamed as loudly as he
could.

Downstairs somewhere, a door slammed.

"All right, fine," he answered it sulkily.  "I just wanted
to see what it felt like."

Having experienced the girlie scream with no discernable
side effects, Mulder left the attic and descended the narrow
stairs to the second floor.  The doors to all the bedrooms,
which he'd left standing wide open the night before, were
shut.

"Doors sensibly shut," he commented.  "Isn't that how it's
supposed to be in a haunted house?  At least, I'd call Hill
House the definitive haunted house of fiction.  Do you
suppose Clarke House is the definitive haunted house of
fact?"

Mulder didn't even bother questioning who he was talking to.
He opened the first bedroom door, finding the bed made
neatly, as expected.  He was surprised, however, to discover
the curtains drawn back, letting in the daylight--such as it
was.  He took a look around.

The room was tastefully decorated in shades of blue.  There
was a hooked rug beside the bed, a ruffled bed skirt that
swept the floor beside the rotted remnants of velvet
bedspread, and a blue vase holding some dead flowers.

"You really ought to replace those," he commented absently
to the room at large.  The dormer window looked out upon the
side yard, and Mulder found himself fascinated with one of
the dead trees outside.  It looked for all the world like a
grotesque monster, its arms spread threateningly, or maybe
one of those apple-throwing trees Dorothy had encountered in
the Wizard of Oz.

He watched the tree for a few minutes, waiting for it to
exhibit some sign of life, and was mildly disappointed when
it continued to act like nothing more than a dead tree.

"Try coming inside," he told it confidently.

He left that room, uninteresting as it was, and entered the
next.  This one was done up in yellow, and Mulder wondered
briefly if there was a Purple Room and an Orange Room, just
like in Hill House.  At this point, he would almost be
disappointed if there was not.

The yellow room was just as neat as the blue room had been,
except for the indentation in the bed, indicating someone had
lain down on top of it after it had been made.  The shape
appeared to be that of a small child, perhaps four or five
years old.  Peeking out from under the bed was a pair of
canvas sneakers, falling apart with age.  Mulder crossed to
the old fashioned dresser and opened a drawer, but there was
nothing inside but a few rodent droppings.

"There are your rats," he told Scully, although she was not
present at the time because she had chosen to desert him,
the man who had stood by her through cancer and Emily and
all nature of crises, to visit that bastard brother of hers.

He opened another drawer, and this one was not empty.

"Eeek!" Mulder screamed half-heartedly as he looked at the
infant foot, complete with shoe, that had disappeared from
his evidence bag the night before.  

Shaking his head at his effort, he put the foot into yet
another bag he withdrew from his pocket.  There was no
point, he knew.  No doubt the foot would disappear from his
possession soon, only to reappear in the kitchen sink, or
something.

The thought of kitchens made him realize he was hungry, and
Mulder looked at his watch.  It read 3:15.

He shook his wrist, then looked again, but the watch still
insisted that over five hours had passed since he'd
awakened.

"So is it my watch that's screwy, or does time really pass
faster here?" he asked the room.

His answer was the bedroom door swinging silently open--no
creaking hinges on this door, oh no, and it occurred to
Mulder dimly that the Martha Stewart ghost needed to give
the kitchen door some ghostly oil.  And oddly enough, he had
left the door open when he'd entered the room.  Which meant
sometime in the past few minutes, someone had shut it.

He watched the door silently, his heart pounding in his
chest, but no entity came through it.  No flash of white, no
Martha floating above the floorboards...nothing.

"Federal agent!" he called again, a small grin on his face.
"Bet that intimidates the hell out of you, doesn't it!"

Clarke House made no reply.

"Answer me!" he yelled suddenly, frustrated with the lack of
response, although had he been forced to say, he couldn't
have told *what* response he expected.

Silence reigned.

"Maybe I'll just grab some paint and fix this place up,"
Mulder said maliciously, and immediately received the answer
he'd sought.

The door in front of him slammed shut, faster and louder
than any human could have slammed it, and that was followed
by a series of bangs throughout the house.  It was as if
every door in the house had been slammed shut one after
another.

Mulder stared at the door, listening to the noises from
below and above, his eyes wide with fear, but once the house
was again silent, he regained some of his bravado.

"Is that what it takes to get a response out of you?" he
asked the house.  "Maybe I'll just threaten to repair this
cracked window over here."

He watched the window, listened for the doors...but all was
still quiet.

It struck Mulder, quite suddenly, that darkness was falling
outdoors.  The rain had stopped, and the sky was clear in
the gathering twilight.

His watch now read 6:42.

"What the FUCK!" he demanded, ripping the timepiece from his
wrist.  "This is bullshit."

It was unlike Mulder to swear so constantly, and some part
of him realized the oddity and questioned it, but he managed
to stifle that voice of reason.

"Fuck you," he said to it.  "And fuck her, too.  Actually, I
think I will.  Fuck her, that is.  I don't think I'll even
ask her permission first--she likes to play rough.  Why else
would a girl join the FBI?  Wanted to play with the *big*
boys, no doubt."

Mulder grinned, and the distorted image of himself he caught in the
mirror brought him instantly back to reality.

"What am I talking about?" he asked himself, horrified at
the thoughts he'd been entertaining.  "Scully, I'm glad
you're not here with me.  Who knows what I might try to do
to you while under the influence of this house."

Under the influence, he told himself firmly.  That was it
exactly.

"I have to get out of here."

The thought came clearly, all by itself, not on the heels of
another, as thoughts are wont to do, and Mulder decided he
would heed the advice.  He walked purposefully to the
bedroom door and twisted the knob.

It was locked.

"Dammit!" he yelled, pounding on the door.

He stopped when answering thuds seemed to come from the
other side.  His breath caught in his throat when he
realized that there was someone--or some thing--just outside
the bedroom where he was now trapped.

"Let me out!" he demanded firmly, twisting the knob again,
but the only reply was the closing of another door across
the hall.

Turning away, scanning the rapidly darkening room for
another exit, Mulder again noticed the indentation on the
bed.  It had changed.  It looked like the person who had
been lying on his or her back had now turned on their side,
perhaps to observe his pathetic attempts to free himself.
Perhaps enjoying his descent into...was it madness?

No, Mulder answered himself absently, eyes glued to the bed,
it was not madness.  It was perhaps a profound lack of
judgement, maybe even carefully suppressed desires--he
shuddered at *that* thought--but it was definitely not
madness.  He had seen madness, and this wasn't it.

As he stared at the bed, he thought he saw a movement--like
breathing, only it wasn't as though the unseen person on the
bed was breathing, it was as if the bed itself was
breathing.  He could barely make out the slow rise and fall,
rise and fall, of the mattress, but it was there.

This time the girlie scream came with no effort.  "Eeeeek!"

The noise from his own throat woke him from his near-trance.

Mulder threw himself at the door again, pounding
frantically, more afraid of what was *inside* the room with
him than of what might be outside.  The dreadful banging on
the door had ceased, but the bed, when he risked a glance
over his shoulder at it, continued to breathe.

All at once the doorknob began to turn slowly from side to
side.  Mulder backed away in horror, realizing he was
drawing ever nearer to the breathing bed but unwilling to
face whatever monstrosity now wanted to come in.

It wants to eat me, he thought clearly.  It wants to eat me
but I won't let it, I can't let it, I--

His thoughts broke off when the door itself began to
breathe.

It pressed inward and outward gently, bending the wood on
its hinges but not threatening to splinter the door...it was
as though...

"The house itself is alive," Mulder said softly.  "It's
alive and it knows I'm here."

He turned frantically toward the window, planning to jump
from the second floor if necessary in order to escape the
house.  He was two steps toward the cracked glass when he
caught sight of the heavy wardrobe in one corner of the
room.

"Of course!"  He nearly sagged with relief.  A place to
hide!  Surely inside a wardrobe was as perfect a hiding
place as beneath a bed, and Mulder could hardly crawl under
*that* bed, now could he?  At this moment, the wardrobe
itself showed no signs of life.

The doorknob behind him continued to turn slowly back and
forth, the door continued its gentle inhalation and
exhalation, and Mulder yanked open the wardrobe door with a
feeling of almost profound gratitude.  Gratitude towards
whom--or what--he didn't really know...perhaps to Clarke
House itself for providing him a place to curl up and hide
until the monsters went back into their lairs.

He yanked the wardrobe door open and stared in shock at what
occupied the small space.

It was the rest of the desiccated baby.

There was nothing girlie about Mulder's scream this time--it
was long and loud and healthy.  It was the scream of a man
who has nearly reached the brink of insanity, and it
occurred to Mulder in a detached sort of way, even while he
screamed, that it was a fine thing--here he had worked all
these years on the X-Files, had seen all manner of
frightening things, had even discovered that the evil that
men do is far worse than that of the imagination...and now
he was ready to collapse over a simple haunted house.

But it isn't simple, his inner self objected.  There is
nothing simple about Clarke House at all.  It is the most
complex of creatures.

He closed his eyes for a long moment, pressing the lids
together tightly, willing himself to believe that the
abomination in the wardrobe was only a figment of his
imagination, but the steady breathing of the house around
him gave lie to that notion.  At last, summoning up the last
of his courage, he opened them again.

The infant corpse was gone.

Mulder stared at the empty wardrobe--dust free, if you
please--and wondered if it was a safe place to hide, or if
the infant would reappear the moment he closed the door,
crawling toward him in the pitch black, its breathing rattly
and labored in contrast with that of Clarke House, its eyes
glowing as it came for him, came to eat him--

A single drop of blood fell from the shelf above.  Mulder
knew it was blood even though he could barely make out the
dark red of it in the growing gloom, because the time in
this infernal house was all screwed up and even though he'd
only been awake a short while, it must already be nearing
midnight.

Then the first drop was joined by a second, splattering
lightly as it hit the wooden floor of the wardrobe.

Slowly, as slowly as he could justify, Mulder raised his
eyes to see what resided on the shelf.

There was no scream at all this time, just a bulging of his
eyes, a hand to the mouth as he fought back a retch.

This time, the infant wasn't desiccated.  Not at all.

It was freshly chewed, its foot missing, its body more red
than white, its small blue eyes open and staring directly
into Mulder's.

He reached a hand automatically toward the pocket where he'd
stashed the bagged, dried foot inside the sneaker, and when
Mulder felt the blood coat his fingers, the blood from the
foot that was not desiccated, but was as fresh as that in
the wardrobe, his shock was complete.

He withdrew his hand bit by bit, reluctant to confirm with
his eyes what his sense of touch told him was true, but at
last it could be put off no longer.  He raised his fingers
so they caught the beam of moonlight that shone through the
window, past the dead tree that resembled nothing so much as
a man, a dead man stretched out on a rack or a bed of iron
spikes or some other equally awful instrument of
torture...and saw the blood coating them.

Mulder fell, thinking just before he hit the floor that he
had already accomplished the girlie scream, now he might as
well go for a girlie faint.

He hoped Clarke house would be merciful, and eat him while he
was unconscious.

*****

Scully slammed the phone down in frustration.

"Still can't reach him?" her brother asked with something
almost like sympathy in his voice.

She shook her head, worried.

"Don't worry, Dana.  He's probably forgotten all about you
in the excitement of his ghost hunt."  The sympathy for his
sister's concern was now replaced with unconcealed sarcasm.

Scully sighed, fighting back the urge to yell at him.  "You
don't understand, Bill," she said defensively.  "It isn't
like Mulder to completely ignore his cell phone.  I'm afraid
something might have happened to him."

"What?" Bill snorted derisively.  "You think a spook got
him?  Don't tell me you're buying into that nonsense now."

She counted to ten, then counted to ten once more for good
measure.  "It's an old house," she explained.  "There's no
telling what kind of condition it's in.  He might be
hurt, and unable to call for help."

"More likely he's been arrested for trespassing and spent
the weekend in jail."

Her face hardened.  "Then he'd have called me to come bail
him out, now wouldn't he?" she replied coldly.

Scully drained her coffee mug and stood up from the kitchen
table.  "Bill, Tara, I've enjoyed the visit, but I'm afraid
I have to go check on him."

"What!"  Bill slammed his fork down, causing his plate of
bacon and eggs to jump.  Matthew began to cry.

"Great, Bill, thanks a lot," Tara snapped, getting up to see
to their baby.

"Sorry, honey," he murmured to her as she passed.  "Dana,
this is ridiculous.  Every time we get together, every time
I try to see you, Mulder always gets in the way.  Why can't
you get away from that guy for just one week?"

"He's my partner," Scully insisted, trying to make him
understand, wondering why she felt the need to explain
herself to Bill--was it just because he was her older
brother?  Had she never grown up where he was concerned?  "I
have an obligation to watch his back."

"He has obligations to you, too," Bill said darkly.
"Besides, it's not like you're on a case."

"If you thought Tara was in trouble, would you sit calmly at
my place drinking coffee, or would you do everything in your
power to help her?" she demanded.

"But that's different," Bill objected.  "Tara is my wife.
You can't compare what we have to what you and Mulder--"

He stopped as Tara, coming up behind him with the baby in
her arms, placed one gentle hand on his shoulder.  He
glanced up at her to see the warning in her eyes.

"No," he said obstinately, suddenly fearing the worst..
"Dana, don't tell me you've gone and *married* that louse!"

That was the last straw.

"No, I have not," Scully replied evenly, pushing her way
back from the breakfast table and heading for the stairs.
She could pack her things and be on a plane to Texas within
a couple of hours, she figured.  Then all she had to do was
locate the place and find Mulder and haul him out of
whatever danger he'd managed to get himself in.  But she
couldn't resist tossing one more word at her stunned brother
and sister-in-law as she started up the stairs.

"Yet."

Bill was finally at a loss for words.

*****

Scully called the police in Clarkeston on her way to the
airport in a taxi and explained the situation to them.  The
promised her they would look into the matter and get back
with her.

The police dispatcher had every intention of complying with
her request--he'd heard all the stories about Clarke House
growing up, and although he didn't really believe this Agent
Mulder was in any danger from ghosts, he might have fallen
through a loose floor board and broken his leg or
something--but just after Agent Scully called, they received
a report of a robbery in progress.

Clarkeston was still a small town, and major crime was
uncommon, though not unheard of, and the police department
was understaffed.  As soon as he received word that the
robbery also involved a possible shooting, he forgot all
about Mulder.  Every available officer was called to the
scene of the current crime.

*****

Mulder awakened slowly, fluttering his eyelids open, then
shut, then open a time or two, adjusting his eyes to the
daylight that streamed brightly through the window, its beam
slightly distorted by the crack in the glass.

It took a minute for the events of the night before--and was
it really the night before, he wondered, or was it last
week, or last month?--refreshed themselves in his mind.
Once they did, he sat up suddenly; he was horrified to
discover himself lying on the bed.

The bed which was now, at least, no longer breathing.

He wanted to scramble off the offending piece of furniture,
but the shooting pains in his head nixed that idea.
Instead, he pressed his palms to his eyes hard, trying to
drive the headache away.  It reminded him for a moment of
the headaches his mother used to suffer after Sam
disappeared.  She'd get a pinched look on her face, her skin
would turn pasty, and the only relief she could find was
contained in a prescription bottle and a darkened room.

As an adult, Mulder had always supposed his mother's pain
was psychological, a result of her family's tragedy.  Now he
felt ashamed of himself for doubting her.  Clearly it was a
family trait, one which Clarke House had uncovered where
real life had failed.

He hoped after he left this place, it would disappear again.

He hoped he would actually leave this place.

Alive, preferably.

And sane.

His head shot up from his hands at the sound of a laugh.  He
winced at the shifting cannonball in his head, but continued
to listen.

It had come from upstairs, in the attic, and there was no
mistaking whose laugh it was.  He hadn't heard it often, but
it was memorable enough to him that he'd recognize it
anywhere.

It was Scully.

Scully was here, in the house.  And she was laughing at him.

"Bitch," he said clearly.  "I'll teach you a lesson, bitch."

It did not seem strange to Mulder that the bedroom door,
which had been locked when he'd passed out last night, was
now standing wide open.  Clarke House had welcomed him, and
since he'd passed the test of initiation--which had to be
what the horrors of the night before had been--it would now
begin to accommodate him.  Hence, he fainted on the floor,
but woke up in a comfortable bed.

His watch, which he'd apparently dropped when he fell, lay
glittering in the sunlight.  Mulder picked it up, noticed
the time said 12:00 midnight, and shook it.  There was no
result, and Scully laughed again from above, louder this
time, more mockingly.

"Scully!" he called loudly.  "Scully!"

Her voice came back to him like a breeze, like a whisper, as
soft and ephemeral as the whiteness that had flashed past
him on the stairs--how many days ago?

"Mulder," she called, teasing him, teasing like the bad girl
she was, like a girl who needed to be taught a lesson.

And who could teach Special Agent Doctor Dana Katherine
Scully better than her partner, who knew her every quirk and
could read her mind in the most crucial of moments.

"Nobody," he told himself confidently.  He started for the
door, and was surprised to find that he could, in fact, read
her mind this very moment.  Right now, she was sitting in a
chair upstairs in the attic, a chair that very much
resembled the desk chair in his basement office, and her
blouse was unbuttoned to the waist.  She wasn't wearing a
bra, and her nipples peaked, beckoning him onward.

She wanted him.

Oh yes.

Mulder licked his lips in anticipation, wondering what she
would taste like, believing he could already taste her on
his tongue, savoring the flavor that was Scully.

Behind his eyes, behind the pain, there was a part of him
that screamed (no, this is wrong, this is crazy, this is NOT
ME!) but he ignored it.  That voice wasn't saying anything
he wanted to hear.

He put one foot on the stairs leading toward the attic, his
eyes trained upwards, his ears waiting to catch any noise,
his nose already smelling the scent of her waiting.

"Coming, Scully," he said in a sing-song voice as he slowly
climbed the stairs.

*****


From the Clark County Gazette
June 2, 1961
From the Obituary Column

Alice Johnson, beloved wife of Roger, passed away suddenly
at her home early this morning.  Mrs. Johnson was born April
16, 1923 in Randall, Texas.  She and her husband moved to
Clarkeston in 1951. In addition to her grieving husband, she
also leaves a daughter, Elisa, a son Bill, a sister, Ruthann
Albrecht, of Enid, Oklahoma, and several nieces and nephews.
She was preceded in death by her son Abel, who passed away
in 1955. Funeral services will be a Clarkeston First
Presbyterian Church, Saturday morning at 10.




"I'm sorry, Agent Scully," Detective Bridges said, holding
the phone a little away from his ear while the woman on the
other end railed at him.  "I'll talk to the dispatcher on
duty, but things have been pretty busy around here today."

He waited while the FBI agent took some deep breaths,
clearly attempting to bring herself under control.  When she
finally spoke again, it was with a much more reasoned tone.

"Can you send someone out there now, Detective?" she asked.
"I understand you don't have a lot of people right now, but
I haven't heard from my partner in three days.  I'm certain
something must have happened to him."

"I'll send a car out there to check," he assured her,
relieved that she'd calmed down.  Although he'd never admit
it to another living soul, angry women scared the hell out
of him.  His wife was just like this one--calm and serene
one moment and furious the next if someone she cared about
was threatened.  He could almost picture Agent Scully. Tall,
brunette, curvy but definitely not overweight--he'd wager
she looked a lot like his wife, in fact.

"Thank you," she said.  "My flight should land within half
an hour.  I'll get up there to Clarkeston as quickly as I
can."

"You drive carefully, ma'am," he admonished.  "Weather's
been cold and rainy all weekend, and the streets are wet."

Only after receiving her assurance that she'd drive very
carefully, did he break the connection.  "Bill," he called
to the officer in the outer office.

Bill Johnson, who had just finished regaling his wife with
tales of his own bravery in vanquishing the man who'd robbed
the store that morning, turned to Detective Bridges with a
big smile.  Life was good.

Life became a little less pleasant in the next moment when
his boss told him to swing out by Clarke House and make sure
some damn fool FBI Agent hadn't gotten himself hurt there.

Bill Johnson had also grown up in Clarkeston, but unlike the
dispatcher, who was young and full of cocky self-assurance
at times, he believed the stories about Clarke House.  After
all, his older brother Abel had disappeared there when Bill
was only two.

Grumpily, not missing the look of amusement that passed
between the dispatcher and Detective Bridges, Bill stomped
out to his patrol car.  He slammed the door and screeched
out of the parking lot, leaving behind no doubt as to his
feelings about this assignment.

Clarke House was only a ten minute drive from the station,
but all the way there, Bill could feel the knot in the pit
of his stomach growing bigger.  For all his bravery in
chasing down a criminal, he knew, and readily admitted, that
he was afraid of Clarke House.

He'd be a fool not to be afraid, after what had happened
there over the years.  After what had happened to his own
big brother.  And although Bill had been too young when Abel
disappeared to really remember the laughing, tow-headed boy
in the family pictures, he never forgot how his mother had
reacted.  She'd fallen into a depression so deep that
nothing his father could do helped, no doctors seemed able
to help, no friends or relatives or well-meaning strangers
could help...and finally, when Bill was eight, she had taken
her own life, unable to deal even then with the loss of her
oldest son.

It was no wonder, then, that Bill both hated and feared
Clarke House.  So he'd do exactly as he'd been ordered, and
no more.  Bill would drive by Clarke House, but that was
all.  He wouldn't park in the driveway, he wouldn't step
foot in the yard, and above all he would never, *never* go
inside.

And when Bill Johnson, younger brother of Abel Johnson, who
had disappeared into Clarke House when he and his young
friend decided to go exploring over forty years ago, drove
by the house, Mulder's car, carefully hidden in the
dilapidated garage, was out of sight.

Bill saw nothing to indicate there might be a missing FBI
agent on the premises, but the eerie bluish light glowing
from the attic windows through the grey afternoon made him
stamp down harder on the gas pedal.

He almost thought he could feel Abel watching him as he
passed.



From 'Stories of Genuine Hauntings'
by Alexander Roberts
copyright 1986

Bill Johnson, who was only a toddler at the time his older
brother Abel disappeared, still lives and works in
Clarkeston.  He's a police officer, and while he often
patrols the town, he tells me he avoids Clarke House if at
all possible.

"I just won't drive by it unless it's absolutely necessary,"
he reveals.  "It's not that I've ever seen
anything there, and I don't really remember when my brother
disappeared, but..."  Here he pauses and gives a shudder.
"There's just--you can feel there's something there, y'know?
Something bad."

Something bad, indeed.  The mother of the other boy who
disappeared along with Abel Johnson told the newspapers she
was convinced the boys had been "swallowed up" by the house.
Swallowed up seems to be as accurate description as any,
since people seem to go inside and never return.  Subsequent
searches of the house, both inside and out, have turned up
no evidence, but the fact remains that a string of
disappearances, all associated with Clarke House, have
occurred.

Not one body has ever been found, not one runaway has ever
changed his or her mind and phoned home, not one
construction worker has returned to work the next day,
laughing at the joke he played on his co-workers.

In fact, there is nothing at all humorous about Clarke
House.  One might even say it is diseased.



Mulder watched the darkened stairwell turn brighter as he
approached the attic.  He remembered the four windows, and
imagined how they would let in the brilliant sunshine.  It
would glint off Scully's copper hair, tinge her eyelashes
with gold, and caress her nipples just before he--

The thought of what he might do to Scully's nipples broke
off at once when he emerged into the attic.

The door had been open again, of course--the attic was
waiting.  Scully was waiting.

But Scully was not, and even as he heard the whisper of her
voice at the back of his mind, Mulder stared at the walls,
floor, ceiling--all covered with dripping, blood-red paint
that spelled out his name, over and over and over again.

In the next second, his eyes wide and his gaze fixed, he
became aware of the smell, and realized it was not red
paint, but blood--naturally it was blood, what else could
you expect from a haunted house but to find your name
written in blood all over the walls, beginning to drip,
beginning to run, beginning to meld together until it
appeared the entire attic had been *painted* in blood.

With a feeling of betrayal--was it possible Clarke House was
not welcoming him, accommodating him, but was instead merely
playing with him?  And what would happen when the house
tired of its new toy?--Mulder turned and stumbled down the
stairs.  The pain in his ankle was still very bad, and the
lightning bolts in his head increased as he descended.

He intended to go on down to the first floor, maybe find
something to eat, since he couldn't remember having any food
at all since those granola bars, and that had to have been
days ago, his stomach was gnawing at him, protesting loudly,
telling him he was *hungry*, dammit, and *thirsty*.  As he
grew closer to the ground floor, he could feel the welcoming
atmosphere of the house, and he suddenly couldn't wait to
get downstairs and see if the fire was glowing, and if the
dining room table was set for dinner.

He was about to put his foot on the first step of the main
staircase when he caught a flash out of the corner of his
eye.  He whipped around, wincing at the renewed agony in his
head, in time to see one of the bedroom doors drifting
closed.

And he could smell her.  She was in that room, no doubt
reclining on the bed, waiting for him, her dripping panties
down around her ankles and her breasts jutting upwards,
straining for his touch.

Mulder grinned, but it was not a nice grin.  It was not a
grin any of his associates had ever seen on his face.  It
felt like the grin he'd caught in the mirror the night
before, and his amusement deepened at the realization.

"Honey, I'm home!" he called in his best Jack Nicholson
voice, and glanced down, halfway expecting to find a hatchet
in his hands.

Instead, he saw his weapon.

He didn't remember drawing it--didn't, in fact, remember
replacing it in the holster after he'd fallen down the
stairs, but there it was in his hand, gleaming silver in the
broad daylight that flooded the second floor through the
three open bedroom doors.

Hearing what he was certain was an answering moan from
Scully, Mulder stepped forward, nudging the fourth door
aside with his foot.  It swung open to reveal a room ravaged
by time, but quite empty of human occupation.

It was the Purple Room, and Mulder laughed aloud at the
sight, forgetting that it had been decorated in shades of
muted green when last he'd explored.

"Did Hill House actually *have* a Purple Room?" he asked
himself.  "Oh well.  Doesn't matter.  I can report with
absolute confidence," he told the dust particles swimming in
the sunbeams, "that Clarke House has a Purple Room.  Guess
Martha forgot to dust in here.  Maybe she doesn't like
purple."

Bowing politely to the dust-filled room, Mulder withdrew,
reholstering his firearm and drawing the door quietly shut.

It was then that he heard the banging on the door
downstairs.  And Scully calling his name.  No sultry,
come-hither lilt in her voice this time, either--she sounded
worried.  And possibly pissed.

He knew he should call out to her, reassure her that he was
all right, but when he opened his mouth to do so, the pain
in both his head and his ankle grew so severe that he nearly
blacked out.  Opting instead for working his way down the
stairs, Mulder intended to greet her in the kitchen.

He wondered if the petrified cornbread was back.

Right now, it even sounded appetizing.

His fingers unconsciously slipped into his pocket, feeling
for the baby's foot, but his pocket was blessedly empty now.
He wasn't sure exactly why that was a blessing, but Mulder
knew without doubt that it was.

"Scully," he tried to call, but found his voice wouldn't
work, and a second later, that whiteness passed him on the
stairs again, trailing his name behind as it disappeared.

It had Scully's voice, but the woman pounding on the
door--that was Scully.  That *had* to be Scully.

But what if it wasn't?  He was suddenly unsure.  What if it
was Scully who waited upstairs, soft and inviting, and the
thing pounding on the back door, trying desperately to get
in, was really the monster of Clarke House, come to eat him?

Mulder inched forward down the remaining stairs and peeked
around the corner just as the glass crashed inward,
shattering.  A hand reached inside, flipped the lock, and
opened the door, and Mulder recognized the hand, he knew it
was her, it was his partner, it was Scully, so why was he
filled with terror?




"Mulder?" Scully asked uncertainly, seeing him staring at
her with fear on his face.  "It's me.  Are you all right?"

He said nothing, and she reached out a hand to him.  Just as
she touched him, tried to grip his wrist, he twisted away
and darted around the corner.  Scully heard him running up
the stairs as she stood stock still, her brain still trying
to register the fact that Mulder had appeared...transparent.
And that her hand had gone right through his arm.

Shaking her head at last, realizing how absurd her thoughts
were, she started after him, but upon rounding the corner
into the living room, saw her partner lying at the foot of
the stairs.

But he was running *up* the stairs, I heard him, her
subconscious whispered as she knelt to examine Mulder.  UP
the stairs.

"Mulder, can you hear me?"

There was no response.  She felt for a pulse and was
relieved to find one although it was weak and thready, and
she worried at the pallor of his skin.  He lay on his side,
half on the floor and half still on the stairs, one foot
caught between two of the rails.  There was a large lump on
his head.  The ankle of the captured foot was swollen to at
least three times its normal size, and she thought it was
probably broken.

"Come on, Mulder, wake up," she urged, slapping at his cheek
lightly.  After one slap, her hand drew back.

There was something--*wrong* about his skin.  It felt
soft...too soft, as if he was...melting.  The word didn't
even begin to describe what she meant, but it was as close
as Scully could come on such short notice, and without a
thesaurus handy.

She reached for her cell phone, prepared to call an
ambulance, and it seemed as she watched, Mulder's body began
to take on that transparent appearance she thought she'd
seen when she thought she'd seen him in the kitchen.
Shaking her head, both at the confusing thought and at the
image, Scully looked again.

It was as if Mulder was disappearing into the house.

Suddenly, the ambulance was a secondary concern.  She had to
get Mulder out of here, now.

It took Scully almost half a minute to extricate his ankle
from the rails that held it prisoner, and during that time
she watched as her partner grew steadily more transparent.
Even his clothing seemed to be fading, as if he was turning
into a ghost right before her eyes.

When she finally had him freed, she slipped her hands under
his arms, ignoring--denying, even--the *squish* sound his
skin made when she touched it.  Praying under her breath,
unaware she was even doing so, Scully summoned all her
strength and began to drag Mulder toward the kitchen door.

He was much lighter than he'd ever been before, all the many
times she'd pulled him out of danger, and she managed to
make rapid progress.  Not rapid enough, though--the closer
to the door they came, the more transparent Mulder grew.  By
the time she'd pulled him all the way across the kitchen,
she could barely see his form at all.  Her hands were
clearly visible through what should have been his clothes
and skin and bones and muscle and blood...

And then, just before he faded away entirely, Scully reached
the door.  She had left it open, but now it was shut, and
for a wild, irrational moment, she was afraid it would be
locked, that the house had locked them inside, that it
wouldn't let Mulder go.  Then she opened it, breathing a
sigh as it swung easily and quietly on well-oiled hinges,
and pulled Mulder outside.

As soon as he was out of the house, his form returned.
Whatever trick of lighting or shadow had caused him to
appear transparent, the cold light of day revealed the man
she knew so well--battered and perhaps broken, but whole and
breathing.  She felt for a pulse again, and this time was
gratified to find it strong.  As she withdrew her hand, his
eyes opened.

"Hey," she smiled, relief flooding through her because now
she knew he would be all right.

"Scully?" he asked, his voice sounding confused, his
expression dazed.  "How did you get down here?"

Thinking he meant to ask how she had gotten "down" to Texas
from California, she answered, "I flew."

Mulder, who had meant nothing of the sort, merely nodded,
accepting her answer as no less strange than anything else
he'd seen in the past few days.

"Do you think you can lean on me and hobble to the car?" she
asked, offering a hand and helping him sit up.  "I'm pretty
sure your ankle's broken."

"It's not broken, just sprained," he contradicted.  "I've
been walking around on it for days."

She stared.  "Mulder, when did you fall on the stairs?"

He shrugged casually.  "A few days ago.  It was no big deal.
I just twisted my ankle and bumped my head a little."

With an uncomfortable glance back at the house--it seemed
almost to be watching them, she thought, then shook that
thought off as well--she helped Mulder to his feet.  All at
once, Scully wanted to put distance between them and Clarke
House, and she didn't care to examine her reasons for
feeling that way too closely.

*****



They drove less than half a block before Mulder made her
stop.  She pulled over to the shoulder, glancing at him
worriedly out of the corner of her eye, but he seemed calm
enough.  For just a moment though, his face--the expression
on it was one she'd never seen before.  Turning to him
once the car had stopped, examining every aspect of the face
with which she had grown so familiar, Scully dismissed the
notion as folly.  Clearly the atmosphere of Clarke House had
gotten to her for a minute, but it was nothing.

And all that idiocy about Mulder "fading away" - that had
obviously been her eyes playing tricks on her.  It was a
dark, gloomy day, and the light inside the house had been
minimal.  Anyone might have made the same mistake.  It was
nothing.

Nothing, she told herself firmly as Mulder gave her a weak
smile.

"I just wanted one last look," he told her.

He turned around in his seat and craned his neck to see the
house around the head rest.  Clarke House stared back at
him, furious at having lost him, and Mulder knew without a
single shred of doubt that, should he venture back inside,
he would be completely absorbed into the structure and
framework and essence of the house very quickly.  It had
wanted him, that he knew for fact; hadn't it written his
name in blood all over the attic?  Hadn't it welcomed him
with a glowing fire and petrified cornbread, possibly the
best it had to offer?  The house was, after all, very old.

And with that thought, with a flash of sudden insight, he
knew.  He knew why the house hated repairs, why it wouldn't
allow its walls to be painted, why it had grown angry when
he'd threatened to repair the broken window.

It was alive.  He'd seen it breathing.

And it wanted to die a natural death, not be artificially
kept alive long after its time, like an elderly grandmother on
life-support, knowing her life has passed, ready to move on,
furious at those who kept her bound to earth and her wasted,
useless body.  Clarke House wanted to live and die as
itself, not to be kept alive with paint jobs and repairs, not
to be murdered before its time by demolition.

It wanted to fall, bit by bit, one piece of plaster, one
roof shingle, one supporting beam at a time, until at last
it sank back into the ground and returned to dust.

Mulder opened his mouth to tell all these things to Scully,
and then stopped.  It would sound irrational, when explained
with mere words, and Scully would blame it on his head
injury.  He didn't want her disbelief to sour his feeling of
understanding, perhaps even of empathy--his feeling of
*oneness* with Clarke House.  For a time, however long he'd
been inside, he had been a part of it, and it had been a
part of him.

It had wanted to eat him, and he had wanted to be eaten.

"Can we go now?" Scully asked nervously, interrupting his
thoughts, and it occurred to Mulder that she was afraid of
Clarke House.  Oh, she'd die before she'd admit it,
especially to him, but he knew that slight tremor in her
voice.

Scully was afraid.

She hadn't been initiated.

She hadn't been welcomed.

She didn't know the house the way he did.

At last he nodded, giving her permission to drive onward.
After a few moments of silence, she asked him, "So what did
you see inside that musty old house, anyway, Mulder?  Did
you meet up with any ghosts or goblins?  I assume you didn't
find any trace of the missing writer."

He was astonished to realize he'd forgotten all about
Alexander Roberts, had forgotten that he'd gone there to
find the missing man.  He had forgotten everything once he'd
entered Clarke House.  But Scully would never understand
that.

He knew it was an attempt to escape her own fear that made
her speak so lightly of Clarke House, but it annoyed him,
nonetheless.  He tried to think of an explanation she could
accept.

"I'm not really sure I saw anything," he lied, for Mulder
was as certain of recent events as he was of his own name.
He knew, for instance, that time had been different inside
the house--it might speed up or it might slow down, but it
was not time as he knew time.  He also knew the fire had lit
itself, evidence had disappeared and reappeared, and that
someone inside liked to keep the dishes washed.

He knew that although outside it was cloudy and rain had
obviously been falling for most of the day, while he'd been
inside Clarke House, the sun had been shining.

And that something in there ate babies.

And that it had wanted to eat him.

And that he'd wanted to be eaten.

Swallowed up.

Absorbed into the structure and framework and essense of the
house, to die its natural death with it, however long that
might take.

And somewhere deep in his soul, Mulder knew--he *felt*--that
if he ever went inside again, he'd never come out.  He'd
never want to come out.

"I think I imagined a lot of stuff while I was unconscious,"
he told her, making it easy for her, giving her explanations
she could cope with in her narrow view of the world, a view
that did not allow for houses that lived and breathed and
ate babies.  "There were bits and pieces from all the ghost
stories I've ever read, and all the scary movies I've ever
seen.  So it must have been in my own mind.  Clarke House
wouldn't be that unoriginal."

"You talk about it like it's alive."

"Do I?" he asked absently.

A few minutes later, Scully turned into the parking lot of
the Clarke County General Hospital, drawing to a stop in
front of the Emergency doors.

"Scully-" Mulder protested.

"Don't even argue with me," she ordered.  "You have a head
injury, and in spite of your opinion, I still think that
ankle is broken.  You're going to get checked out.  It
isn't optional."

Mulder sighed, and sat back in the seat while Scully went
inside to fetch the orderlies.  He knew he had no choice but
to let her fuss over him.  She just had that tone in her
voice.

While he waited, he let his mind roam idly over the events
of the past days, and for few seconds, Mulder found he could
almost make himself believe it had been a hallucination
brought on by the blow to the head.  He wondered, if he
worked at it, how long it would take to make himself agree
with Scully that it had all been in his mind.

He wondered if he would sleep better at night, believing
none of it had been real.

But when he stuck his hand in the pocket of his jacket, the
pocket where the infant's foot had been while the house
initiated him, he felt wetness, and when he withdrew it, his
fingers were covered with blood.


END


*****

Author's notes--

The locations in this story are purely fictitious.  There is
no Clarke County, Texas, and if there is a town called
Clarkeston, it's too small to be listed in my atlas.  The
"references" to newspaper and book articles are likewise
fictitious, except for the paragraph from The Haunting of
Hill House, by Shirley Jackson.  If you have never read the
book, and haunted houses interest you, find it and read it.
If you've never seen the movie made back in the sixties by
director Robert Wise, try to rent it, or watch for it on
late-night television.  That piece of junk that came out a
few years ago by the same name can't hold a candle to the
original.

This entire story, including the name of the house, Clarke
House, are figments of my imagination.  The structure
itself is real, however.  On a trip home from Oklahoma one
day it caught my eye.  I thought it was such a fascinating
house that I took the next exit off the freeway, turned
around and went back for a closer look.  Only the fact that
there were late-model cars in the driveway, indicating
people actually lived in the house, stopped me from
exploring further.

On my next trip north I took along a camera and snapped some
pictures, and it is from those photos and the inspiration
they provided that this story grew.


 
One cat just leads to another. - Ernest Hemingway