fic: The Ghosts of Thurmere Hall (1/5)
TITLE: The Ghosts of Thurmere Hall
FANDOM: The X-Files
RATING: R
PAIRING: Mulder/Scully established
SETTING/SPOILERS: Set post-Brand X but pre-Requiem. Nothing extremely overt with regards to spoilers but there are references to the following: Squeeze, Tooms, Irresistible, Memento Mori, Redux II, Chinga, Fight the Future, How the Ghosts Stole Christmas, Millennium, Orison, Theef, all things, Brand X, and a slight dig at I Want to Believe.
OVERALL WORD COUNT: 35,603
DISCLAIMER: Everything belongs to Chris Carter, including the loose ends and the there’s-no-way-that-possibly-fits timeline.
SUMMARY: A quiet vacation in England begins with a ghost hunt as Mulder and Scully investigate the paranormal activity at Thurmere Hall.
A/N: This is the result of six months of semi-hard work, restless nights, and a plethora of emails to the following people, all of whom have been instrumental in getting this off the ground:
all_shine_on, hummingfly67,
mack_the_spoon, and
memories_child. Thank you also to those on my filter list who provided encouragement along the way, and to
greydawning and
newo_fic for the Big Bang support community that has been immensely useful. Finally, thank you to
memories_child and
truemyth for taking an idea and putting it out there for the rest of us to become a part of.
Based on a real place and true events (with a lot of creative licence).
Turn the lights off, sit back, and enjoy.
* * * * *
Ominous black clouds crowded in the sky above the sixteenth-century Manor House. Oak trees, their limbs bare yet plentiful, stood in the grounds nearby; the slightest breeze would have ruffled the leaves of the evergreens, hiding in the shadows of the taller trees, yet the air was still. The ducks were gone from the river next to the house and no wayward sparrow or blackbird called out into the darkness. The park, of which the house was at the centre, was usually teeming with wildlife, and even at seven-thirty on a drab October evening there could often be found the odd brave dog-walker or two, or birdwatchers with equipment both amateur and professional keeping an eye out for an owl or nightjar. Tonight there was nobody. Everything was motionless, muted, and Susan Dalton didn’t like it one bit.
She had lost track of time after seeing the last stragglers out and locking the doors of Thurmere Hall at five. If it wasn’t for the new exhibition arriving tomorrow, she would have followed them out and gone home herself, but the old display needed to be boxed and ready to be moved and the cases had to be cleaned for the new collection. Susan just knew she wouldn’t have time in the morning because visitors potentially started arriving at nine and then she had to be on hand to offer a guided tour or to answer any questions about Thurmere’s history. There was no way she could come to work early, not when she had to drop Hannah off at school at eight-forty-five and no earlier. The delivery had been due to arrive in fifteen hours; Susan had sighed to herself in resignation and begrudgingly wandered over to the east wing, the designated art gallery-cum-museum, to get to work.
She had been so immersed in carefully packaging the delicate objects that she was surprised to find two and a half hours had passed when she glanced at her watch. All that remained was for the shelves to be dusted and the glass casing polished, and then she could go home. Getting to her feet and stretching, Susan made her way to the cleaners’ storage cupboard, heels loud on the floorboards, echoing into the darkest recesses like a funeral bell. She rubbed her neck with one hand as she went. She was getting too old to be sitting on the floor for two hours at a time.
Arriving at the door, she selected the rarely used key from the ring on her belt and opened it, flicking the switch just inside. A dull light emitted from the naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. The small room was cluttered, to say the least, and for a moment Susan stared in disbelief at the mess. No one cleaner tended to stick around for longer than a couple of months for various reasons - another job suddenly came up, health problems, it’s just not working out - yet she was amazed anyone could find anything to clean with amid the chaos. The rest of the Hall was impeccable; there was a certain irony in the cleaners’ cupboard being the dirtiest in the whole house.
Susan started with an old shelving unit to her left. There were marks in the thick layer of dust that showed where a can of fluid had been dragged instead of lifted. Scanning the bottom shelves and finding neither a feather duster nor polish, she stood on tiptoes to see the top. The floorboards creaked a little in protest at the change in pressure but they remained firm. The top shelf yielded bleach, air freshener, some papier-mâché/wallpaper paste solution that should have been thrown out months ago, and… her fingers reached in earnest for a cylinder hidden behind a bottle of white vinegar… polish! Susan smiled in triumph.
She found a couple of old rags in a corner and the duster, oddly enough, inside the drum of a defunct washing machine half-hidden by plastic sheeting. By the time she had uncovered all she wanted, her skin and clothes were covered with age-old dust and a thin film of grease (she didn’t know where that had come from but she wasn’t about to start asking now). Tired and bedraggled, and more than ready to leave Thurmere Hall behind for the night, she crossed the small room to the sink under the window to wash off as much of the sticky substance as she could before admitting defeat and handing her suit over to the dry cleaner. She was pleased to find the taps still worked and she scrubbed her hands vigorously under the running water.
It was as she reached for a tissue to dry her hands she happened to look out of the window onto the courtyard below. A figure was walking across it.
Susan froze. The only way to get to the courtyard was through the house and she had locked the door hours ago.
Hadn’t she?
She was certain she had.
Had someone broken in?
She hadn’t heard anything but that didn’t mean much.
Were there more?
She held her breath, eyes riveted to the form illuminated by the courtyard lights, shadow long and black over the stone flags. Susan was fairly sure it was a female, judging from the shape and the clothes. She frowned. The dress looked familiar… Tudor-esque, perhaps. There were biannual re-enactments outside the Hall and the clothes were stored in the attic when they weren’t being used. The intruder must have broken in and taken them, Susan reasoned. But why? What would anybody want with an Elizabethan costume?
The woman in the courtyard stopped under one of the lamps and looked directly at Susan. Her eyes were sunken into her skull, covered by thin, pockmarked flesh that seemed to have been subjected to a torture rack, so taunt and strained it was to fit over her bones. She was so pale, even under the golden glow, and yet her eyes shone with an unnatural brightness, boring into Susan’s with such force that she almost took a step back but couldn’t bear to tear her gaze away. It was as though the woman was looking not at her but through her, into her soul and every fibre of her being, and a cold chill worked its way through her body, causing her to shiver and the tiny hairs on her arms to stand on end.
And then, under Susan’s scrutiny, the woman vanished.
* * * * *
Nine-sixteen on a Saturday morning, or so the alarm clock’s luminous red LCD digits claimed as they burned into her sleepy eyeballs. Why did the manufacturers make them so damn bright? At least it was the weekend and that in itself meant no chirpy, caffeine-fuelled DJ playing terrible music and even worse phone-in competitions. It was almost enough to compensate for the ridiculous lights. Her mind, still foggy with the vestiges of sleep, conjured up an image of the clock’s digits in a neon desert. Scully snickered softly to herself; they wouldn’t look out of place in Las Vegas.
She rubbed her bleary eyes and ran a hand through her mussed hair, taking in the empty space beside her. She had slept well and for a good eight hours - the doctor in her approved - and it would take a few minutes for her muscles to lose the natural lethargy that came with a decent night’s sleep, a rarity in her line of work. She glanced again at the clock on the bedside table and decided to lounge in bed, another five minutes, partly because she couldn’t find the energy to move just yet but mainly because she could and she so seldom had the opportunity.
The shutter blind at the window had been left open overnight and now weak rays of fall sunlight filtered in through the horizontal slats, stretching lazily across the floor and the blanket covering her body. Dust particles danced like fireflies in the musty air; too many out-of-town cases combined with the cool temperatures meant the apartment was overdue for a good airing out. She longed for a time when she could throw open the windows and feel the refreshing breeze swoop in to take away the nightmares that clung to the cobwebs as if they were dream catchers. The bad dreams were few and far between nowadays; her sleep was restful and not often permeated with horrific monsters and sick men, and although her recent re-encounter with one Mr Pfaster was still fresh in her mind, Scully was able to rely on her unconscious to keep him locked away while she dozed. She trusted herself more than jail cells.
Sighing softly, she tossed back the sheets and dragged herself from the comfort of the bed, pulling on a shirt she found at the foot of it. Her feet made little noise as she padded into the living room.
Mulder, dressed in jeans and a rumpled t-shirt, was seemingly engrossed by something on his computer screen. No discernible artist’s impression of Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster adorned the monitor to give her a clue as to where his interests lay that morning. It could be mothmen in Ohio or zombies invading upstate New York for all she knew, or maybe something as innocuous as the latest Knicks news or the batting averages for the Yankees in the ’87-’88 season. She never did know with Mulder. He was a matryoshka except he grew bigger with every layer she peeled off, revealing more of the whole instead of depleting it, never losing the essence of who he was despite her knowledge expanding like the universe as he granted her access to the wonderful workings of his mind. Sometimes she thought she could see it, heavy cogs straining with the magnitude of his tangential thoughts and ideas, his off-Broadway beliefs.
She pressed a kiss to the top of his head, sneaking a glance at the computer before perching on the edge of his desk and stealing his coffee.
“Good morning,” he said with a smile, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms across his chest.
“Morning,” she replied between sips of the hot liquid. “I didn’t think I’d sleep so long.”
“You were pretty out of it when I got up. I think the drool patch on my shoulder has just about dried,” he teased.
“It’s not my fault a certain somebody kept me awake until one in the morning.”
“Wasn’t it worth it?” A mischievous glint appeared in his eyes. Scully ducked her head, grinning, keeping silent yet answering his question all the same. Oh, it had most definitely been worth it, spending a Friday night with his head between her thighs and that wonderful tongue teasing her almost to the point of torture. She had gained her revenge later when she had taken him in her mouth, smiling around him as he muttered an unintelligible stream of sounds that may have included her name. And then when he had settled himself on top of her and entered her with one long, smooth stroke… she felt her toes curl just thinking about it.
Damn, but that man knew how to play her like a violin. When it came to her body, he was Itzhak Perlman himself.
Back to the room, Dana, she admonished as though she was coming out of a hypnotic trance (and perhaps she was). “What are you working on?” she asked, lifting her head to find him staring at her legs peering out from under his navy blue dress shirt, the one he had worn to the office yesterday and the one she had slid off his broad shoulders that very same evening. He touched her knee briefly; a ghost of a smile flashed across his face before he turned his attention back to the screen.
“I’ve received an email from a woman who works in a Grade One listed building in England called Thurmere Hall.” He explained, and then read: “It was built in 1575 by the Charnocke family, decorated with bay windows and the Ionic columns which even now flank the entrance, and was passed on through the generations until the early nineteenth century. It fell to Robert Smith-Bannister, who added the south wing and stuccoed the interior. He left the ceilings of the drawing room and the Great Hall alone, however, and the mid-seventeenth century plasterwork is still there to this day.”
He pulled up a photograph of heavy wreaths and disporting cherubs for Scully to look at. She put the coffee cup down and obligingly peered at the image. “I’ve never known you to be particularly interested in architecture alone.”
“Well, the house was gifted to the people of Charnley - that’s where this place is - in 1922 as a memorial to the men who had died during World War One. Since then the local council has maintained it. It’s rumoured Oliver Cromwell stayed there in the 1600s before going into battle.” He glanced at her to gauge her reaction.
“Mulder, just get to why you’re giving this credence. I assume it’s related to the paranormal,” she said, a bemused grin coming to the forefront at his delighted expression, “so please, enlighten me. A place that old must be haunted, right?”
“Oh, Scully,” he sighed happily, pleased she had said it even if she was mocking him. His hand snaked around her waist to pull her into his lap. He gave her a quick kiss before scrolling through the email on the monitor. “Susan Dalton is the visitor services officer at Thurmere Hall. Last Tuesday evening she was working late, packing up an exhibit of local artefacts, when she saw a woman walking across the courtyard.”
“I take it that’s unusual.”
“Highly. She locked the door before she started working, two hours earlier, and that’s the only way in and out. She later checked all the windows in case someone had broken in but there was nothing out of the ordinary.”
“So this woman in the courtyard had been in the building before she locked the door,” Scully said.
“Maybe,” Mulder conceded, “but that doesn’t explain why she was wearing a dress right out of a costume drama. Or how she vanished into thin air before Mrs Dalton’s eyes.”
“Vanished?”
He nodded. “Disappeared. Completely. One minute she was stood under a lit lamp and the next she just… wasn’t.” He smiled to himself at Scully’s frown; he knew her mind was sifting through the garbage for a plausible explanation, eyes bright and alert despite recently waking. He suspected teleportation wouldn’t be high on her list of theories. Maybe she would account for the shadows as a place to hide or she could question Mrs Dalton’s eyesight or mental health, or maybe she would even suggest an elaborate hoax or a prank carried out by bored teenagers. He still didn’t know, even after seven years of working together, how she would respond to his latest theory and he enjoyed the lack of predictability in their partnership, just as he suspected she did. After all, if you don’t use it, you lose it, Mulder mentally recited, remembering the motto one of his professors at Oxford used at the end of every tutorial.
And her mind was racing so fast he was amazed her synapses could fire in time.
“And how do you know this woman, this Mrs Dalton, is legitimate? How did she get hold of your email address, Mulder?” she finally asked, surprising him by not offering her opinion on the disappearing lady of the Manor. That was Scully, not tossing the obvious his way for him to toy with and rebuff.
His lips curved upwards ephemerally as he said, “Apparently her husband’s pretty big on paranormal phenomena. He’s from North Carolina originally and had read a couple of articles I wrote for Omni relating to ghosts and spirit manifestation. He suggested she contact me when she told him what happened. The Gunmen have already checked them out: they aren’t nutcases.”
Scully supposed she should be glad for the impromptu background check; the Gunmen meant well, even if them claiming someone was crazy brought to mind the words ‘pot’ and ‘kettle’. Mulder and Scully had examined far too much based on attention-seekers and time-wasters. “The husband’s interested in the paranormal - I take it she isn’t?”
Mulder shrugged. “She’s seen Ghostbusters.”
Scully stared at him for a moment like he had sprouted another head. “Mulder,” she said, “are you seriously considering investigating this?”
He rested his chin on her shoulder. “We both have vacation time stored up.”
“Yes, exactly. Vacation, Mulder. As in taking a break from work. Besides, this would mean going all the way to England.”
A low voice in her ear growled, “Remember what happened the last time I went to England? What happened when I came back?”
She felt a flush work its way up her neck. “I remember,” she murmured.
“Come on, we’ll go, spend the night, check it out, perform an exorcism if necessary, and then we’re free to enjoy the delights of the English countryside. It’ll be fun.” He gave her a gentle squeeze and looked at her expectantly.
She heard Quasimodo at work in the distance.
* * * * *
Their flight was delayed at Dulles and that was only the beginning. A storm kept them grounded for over an hour with nowhere to go and nothing to do but watch the rain pelt the windows and the lightning draw ever closer. A young girl two rows back let out an ear-piercing scream whenever the thunder hit. Scully winced and cursed herself for forgetting to pack Tylenol in her carry-on.
The turbulence was bad all across the Atlantic, almost as bad as the queasiness of her stomach. She wasn’t terrified of flying but the mechanics of keeping a plane in the air largely depended on a smooth ride; factor air pockets into the equation and the variable changed everything. Change could be a good thing but not when it involved nose-diving several thousand feet. But Mulder held her hand and let her use his shoulder as a pillow; he told her ancient ghost stories and she was lulled to sleep by the tone of his voice, as comforting to her now as the well-worn copy of Moby Dick she carted around with her as a child.
She landed in England but her suitcase didn’t. Typically, Mulder’s was one of the first bags off the line. He heaved it off the conveyor belt with a satisfied grunt and said, “One down, one to go. We’ll be out of here in no time.” His words were a curse: they stood at baggage claim for ninety minutes, watching the crowds disperse and the bags disappear. There was still no sign of her case. They traipsed to the other side of the airport to enquire about it and were told to go back to where they had come from; airport policy seemed to be ‘it’ll show up eventually’. Mulder, wise man he was, purchased some ridiculously overpriced coffee in an attempt to keep her temper at bay. He slung his arm across her shoulders as they walked. The belt was still moving when they got back. Her suitcase was making the rounds alone.
They managed to grab a taxi outside the terminal. The driver got out to help them with their luggage and once it was stowed away he asked where they were going.
“Thurmere Hall, in Charnley.”
His face went white, eyes wide and staring. “No, no, I don’t go there.”
“It isn’t far,” Mulder said.
“I don’t go there.”
“Why not?” Scully asked irritably. It had been a long day and all she wanted to do was check into that quaint B&B Mulder had found on the Internet. It was an hour’s drive away from Charnley and the four-poster bed sounded so inviting; spending the night in a four hundred and twenty five year old house instead (a four hundred and twenty five year old haunted house, she reminded herself) was beginning to sound more and more like a punishment for some unknown sin.
“I just don’t go there. Find another taxi. I don’t go there.”
Mulder opened his mouth to protest but Scully put a hand on his arm. “Let’s go.”
While he dragged their bags from the back of the vehicle, Scully wandered down the ranks and asked each driver if they would take her and her partner to Thurmere Hall. One sped off upon hearing the name. The majority refused outright, rolling up their windows and turning back to their newspapers. She was ready to commandeer a car to drive there herself when a voice behind her said, “I’ll take you.”
The big man, muscular and taller than Mulder, held her gaze but did not intimidate her. “You’ll take us to Thurmere Hall?” she asked as her partner took his place by her side, bags at his feet.
“I’ll take you.”
“If I may ask,” Scully said once they were on their way, “why did so many drivers refuse to go?”
“They’re very superstitious.”
“All of them?” Mulder questioned.
“If they weren’t when they first started on this job, they are now.”
“And why’s that?”
“Look,” their taxi driver said, glancing at them periodically through the rear view mirror, “certain places in these parts have reputations, and with good reason. I take it you’ve heard of the Pendle Witches?”
“Vaguely,” Mulder replied. “I think an old roommate might have mentioned them once or twice.”
“Happened not too far from here, back in 1612. A local woman named Alizon Device is walking through the forest up on Pendle Hill when she comes across a bloke, John Law, a peddler, and asks him for some pins. Well, it all kicks off, with her claimin’ she was gonna buy them off him and his family sayin’ she had no money and was beggin’ and stealin’, but a few minutes after they first meet, he suffers a stroke and blames her. Now, there’s already bad blood between the two families, real Capulet and Montague conflict if you know what I mean, and there’s some cursin’ on both sides, almost a dozen dead bodies thanks to witchcraft, if you listen to local lore, and next thing you know, you’ve got eleven people on trial with ten hangin’ from nooses by the time it’s through.”
Mulder had listened intently to the man’s story, had noticed how he dropped the ‘g’ from the ends of verbs when he was excited and losing himself in his tale of witchcraft and rivalry. He wondered if he did something similar, if Scully had picked up on a telling signal in his voice when he had the slide projector up and running and plane tickets in his pocket, a stamped 302 in a manila file. He’d have to ask her.
“It’ll be getting busy this time of year, though,” the driver warned. “Ever since a TV crew filmed up there on Halloween a couple of years back, there’ve been crowds every October. I think some of them are trying to recreate Blair Witch.” He chuckled.
“TV crew? Did they find something?”
“Depends on your definition of ‘something’. I swear, I’ve watched that damned show for months and whenever anything remotely interesting happens, it’s either off-camera or they go runnin’ the other way.” He shook his head. “The presenters seemed spooked enough - excuse the pun - but it’s a load of baloney if you ask me.”
“But it’s not far from Charnley?”
“Mulder!” Scully protested.
“What? I’m only asking where Pendle Hill is; if it’s on our way to the hotel then-”
“You said Thurmere Hall was it, the only paranormal activity you’d indulge yourself in for the week. You’d forget about work and the FBI and pending cases so we could spend some quality time together enjoying the English countryside.” Her voice was deliberately low, the tone the same one she used before a meeting with the AD when she told him to keep his temper under wraps. This time, he sensed she was struggling to control hers.
“Yeah, but-”
“Were they or were they not your words, Mulder?” She fixed him with a stare. He could see the driver out of the corner of his eye looking at the road and not the bickering couple in the back of his taxi. He’d probably seen it all before.
“They were, and I intend to uphold that, but while we’re here-”
“I’d rather not spend my week off traipsing through the woods with you. I know what happened the last time, and the time before that, and I am not prepared to do that again while we’re on vacation. We came here to get away from work; Thurmere Hall was a compromise, Mulder. If I go with you, you devote your time to relaxing for the rest of the trip instead of chasing ghosts and witches and God only knows what else.” She pinched the bridge of her nose and squeezed her eyes shut.
Instantly, his hand caught her wrist. “Are you okay, Scully?”
“Just a headache,” she muttered. “It’s been a long day.”
“And I haven’t made it any better by arguing with you, I know. I’m sorry.” He cupped her cheek despite the seatbelt digging into his side. “This is it, okay? You, me, Thurmere Hall, tonight. We walk out of there and we check into the B&B, and we lie on that bed with the fire roaring and the sheets pulled up to our noses and we sleep until we can’t sleep any more.”
“That sounds good,” she whispered.
He smiled. “I know it does. We’ll do it, I promise, just as soon as we’re done in Charnley.”
The rest of the forty-five minute trip was spent in silence save for the occasional explosion of a barking voice from the driver’s walkie-talkie. Mulder’s hand found Scully’s across the empty middle seat and he squeezed her fingers, encouraged when she curled her digits around his possessively. Once off the motorway, they drove along quiet roads, the glow from the streetlamps highlighting the shops and houses, until they too disappeared. The lights became less frequent; the landscape was reduced to barely visible fields. The roads narrowed until there was hardly room for one car, let alone another going the opposite way, and twigs from the bushes lining the road snapped at the windows. Even with the headlights on, the darkness seemed to advance and consume.
The driver suddenly took a left turn onto a bumpy dirt track, which thankfully didn’t take long to navigate, and the loose stones at the other end were slightly better for the car’s suspension. He pulled up on the secluded parking lot, keeping the engine running, and said, “I hear this place is haunted. That’s what the other guys tell me, at any rate. That’s why they won’t come near here.”
“Really,” Mulder replied, keeping a straight face more for Scully’s benefit than his own. He could tell by the stiff set of her shoulders and the lack of a smile in the past twelve hours she still wasn’t in the best of moods despite his efforts. To exuberantly overindulge in a bit of small talk about apparitions would place him firmly in her bad books, if he wasn’t there already, and they were supposed to be on vacation. Together. One disagreement in the back of a taxi was quite enough. He kept his voice relatively light as he enquired, “What have you heard?”, risking a glance at Scully only to find she was intently watching the driver, awaiting his response. He supposed she saw this as a case and she always gave her full attention to the work. Of course, it was also feasible she wanted to disprove any theories he might come up with as quickly as possible so they could leave and truly begin to unwind. After the disaster at the airport, he vowed to try and make that happen for her.
“There are rumours,” the driver said carefully, “and bear in mind they’re only rumours to me - I’ve never seen anything strange and I’ve been coming round these parts for twenty years - but a lot of people believe them, including the other guys driving taxis. They all claim to sense some weird shit, pardon my French, whenever they get close to the Hall. You know that shivering sensation, they say someone’s walkin’ over your grave? According to them, everyone here shivers even when it’s twenty-five degrees out and sunny. You’d think they all got pneumonia or something. Not many of them’ll talk about it and even fewer will bring you here, but one guy once told me he’s seen people, ghosts, materialise out of thin air, shadows walking past lit windows when it’s been shut up the night. I dunno, sounds like too many horror movies and stories told over campfires but something got them scared, that’s for sure.”
“But you don’t believe it? You’ve never felt anything?” Mulder asked.
“Can’t say I’ve seen anything out of the ordinary but I got to admit, there is something not quite right with Thurmere Hall.”
“What do you mean by that?” Scully enquired.
He unbuckled his seatbelt and turned to face them properly, eyes serious. “It’s a feeling you get when you go near the place, like you know something’s about to go wrong but you don’t know when or what or how. I can’t explain it, exactly; you’ll see when you get up there.”
They got out of the taxi, grabbed their bags, and paid the driver. Before he pulled out, he said, “You two needing a ride to your hotel later tonight?”
“Actually, we’re staying here overnight,” Mulder replied.
The driver stared at them. “You two gotta be the craziest tourists I ever had in my ride. You’re seriously staying here? Even after you heard all that shit?”
“Because of all that shit.”
“Rather you than me, my friends. Couldn’t pay me to spend the night in there.”
“Oh, we’re doing it voluntarily,” Mulder said cheerfully. “Thought it would be a rush.”
The driver looked at Scully. “Miss, forgive me for saying so, but you got yourself one mad hatter of a boyfriend.”
“This is nothing,” she replied dryly. “You should see him at home.”
He laughed. “Well, just be careful, alright? And if you need a ride tomorrow - if you make it outta there - you just give me a call and I’ll pick you up, take you wherever you wanna go.” He handed Mulder a scrap of paper with his number on.
“Thank you, we will.”
He took one last look before pulling away and out onto the open road again. “Crazy motherfuckers,” he said to himself with a smile, shaking his head.
Mulder and Scully watched the car until it disappeared from sight. Scully stamped her feet against the gravel in an attempt to warm up; there was no Indian summer in the North of England and she could see her breath condense as soon as it left her body. Above her head, a streetlight flickered once, twice, and then cut out completely. Mulder glanced up at it and then back at his partner.
“Let’s hope that’s not an omen.”
The other lights instantly shut down in perfect synchronicity. They were plunged into a rural darkness, made worse by the early nightfall at such a time of year and the heavy cloud cover above. Both listened intently for signs someone else was there but only the howling wind made a noise as it rattled the limbs of the deciduous trees a few yards away, their leaves already sacrificed to the elements. Stones grated underfoot as Mulder dug into his pockets and pulled out a flashlight, turning it on quickly. He couldn’t shake the feeling they were being watched, invisible eyes attuned to their every move.
Scully quirked an eyebrow. “You were saying?”
He slowly scanned the deserted car park. “Okay, that’s… how do you explain that?”
“Walk and talk, Mulder. It’s freezing out here.”
“If that cab driver’s to be believed, it won’t be any better once we get inside,” he said as he grabbed the handles of their cases and started to drag them across the loose stone to the narrow passageway leading to the Hall. Flanked by overgrown hedges and weeds, it was only wide enough for one person, and even then it was a squeeze. Mulder went first with his flashlight, the cases trailing behind him. “All this vegetation’s making me think we’re in the maze at the Overlook Hotel and some guy with a pair of shears is waiting for us at the other end. There’s something spooky about this place, Scully.”
“You haven’t even seen it yet,” she argued.
“How else would you explain our sudden descent into darkness back there?”
She muttered a curse as she tripped over a tree root. “A power failure, maybe. You have to consider how remote and isolated the Hall is; it must be fifteen minutes to the nearest building. We’re in the middle of nowhere, Mulder. They probably have blackouts all the time.”
“I don’t think it’s a blackout, Scully.”
She had been so intent on watching her feet she almost ran into the back of him, sidestepping at the last possible moment. “Why did you stop…”
Her gaze fell on the drab grey façade, impressively lit by bright yellow light coming from the ground floor windows which appeared to reach at least sixteen feet high when four were stacked, as was the case with the two battlement-esque towers that were part of the main structure. The building was constructed of simple stone blocks, possibly granite, with the quoins and even the mullions of the upstairs windows the same dreary shade. The balustrade framing the asymmetrical front was crumbling in places yet still gave the house an elegant air unlike any other despite its dourness. It wasn’t a terribly ugly building, by any means, and the sheer size and history of the place was unequivocal but it was still grim and bleak, especially in the darkness.
Scully half-expected to hear a hound baying nearby but there was just another sharp gust of howling wind that made her pull her coat tighter around her frame.
“First impressions?” Mulder asked.
“The Addams Family could live here,” she said, still eyeing up the house. Mulder barked out a laugh and nudged her shoulder.
“C’mon, it’ll be fun,” he said, and set off towards the defunct driveway. She followed him quickly, surprised when the loose stones they had been walking on suddenly turned to solid asphalt twenty yards away from the entrance and then to sandstone flags for the final few steps. It was as though someone had tried to modernise the place and make it easier for visitors but then couldn’t be bothered finishing the job. At least this was safer than before; Scully had thought she might break her ankle on the shifting balance of the stones, and that was with sensible shoes on in dry weather. In a month or so, in the heart of winter with a thin sheen of ice coating the ground, the short walkway would be a lethal tunnel, near impossible to cross.
Thurmere Hall loomed in front of them. The door could have been claimed from a monastery. It was made from thick, dark oak, the nail-studded wood tarnished with deep etches and grooves. A gothic-inspired lion’s head doorknocker sat proudly on the right hand side, its gaping mouth rusted. A single gold knob, also weathered, lay unobtrusively at waist-height. As Mulder knocked on the door with childlike glee, Scully took the time to take a closer look at the building.
The semi-octagonal towers that framed either side dwarfed the archway and the door that nestled underneath it. Peering inside, her face to the cold glass, Scully saw they housed bay windows. The window frames had been painted white a long time ago; they were now peeling but from a distance it was not noticeable. It had been a good idea, at least in principle; the colour had added a little light and brightness to the otherwise gloomy frontier and would have been likely to blind a first-time viewer to the obvious flaws. The Ionic columns Mulder had told her about were taller than both the door and the arch, coming to rest under the third row of windowpanes. A twin set of stone lions lay poised on top of the pillars, staring into the distance with permanent expressions of contempt on their frozen faces.
“If this place was truly haunted, Mulder, shouldn’t the door have suspiciously creaked open by now?” She crossed her arms over her chest.
He glanced at her and knocked again, loud and booming. “Maybe the poltergeists are on vacation. The lights are on but nobody’s home…”
“You did tell this woman we were arriving today, didn’t you?” Scully received a glare by way of a reply; she held her hands up in surrender and turned her back to the Hall, stepping onto the asphalt again. She exhaled loudly and rubbed her neck with one hand, attempting to soothe the aching muscles; sleeping on a plane never did serve well, even if Mulder did kindly offer his shoulder as a pillow. Now she had to spend the night awake in this godforsaken house - if they ever got in - when all she wanted was to feel the tips of her fingers again, have a decent meal in her stomach, and fall asleep next to her partner. Playing Dan Ackroyd to Mulder’s Bill Murray wasn’t exactly her idea of a good time, not least when they could be spending their vacation exploring England’s natural beauty and history.
Behind her, the door swung open. She swivelled to see a flushed middle-aged woman stood in the doorway, catching her breath.
“I’m so sorry,” she apologised immediately. “I was upstairs when you knocked. It takes a while to get down here. You’re Fox Mulder? Susan Dalton: pleased to meet you.” She held out her hand, which Mulder shook.
“This is my partner, Dana Scully.” He offered an introduction. “Scully?” he asked when she didn’t respond.
She was staring at one of the upstairs windows. “Mrs Dalton, is there anybody else here with you tonight?”
“No, just me. Why?”
“There’s somebody moving around upstairs,” Scully said calmly, keeping her eyes fixed on the glass. Mulder took a step back to look, Susan following, and as they watched a decidedly human silhouette slowly crossed from one side of the lit window to the other.
“When we arrived, there were no lights on upstairs at the front of the house,” Mulder said quietly.
“I didn’t go near there; I was working in the back,” Susan whispered, breathing heavily.
“You didn’t turn that light on?” Scully asked sharply.
“No.”
She and Mulder glanced at each other before moving for the door. “This way?” Mulder asked, already heading for the wide staircase with Scully hot on his heels, the large entrance hall echoing their footsteps from the stone floor.
“Top of the stairs, the door at the end of the corridor on the right!” Susan shouted, pulling their suitcases inside before shutting and bolting the heavy door behind them with nary a creak.
The landing at the top of the stairs was dark. Mulder pulled his flashlight from his pocket and flicked it on, the yellow beam illuminating first the floorboards and then the portraits on the walls: Christopher Columbus, William the Silent, Ambrogio Spinola. Scully’s breathing was loud and strong in Mulder’s ear as they slowly advanced down the shadowy hallway, Mulder’s knuckles white, his grip a little tighter than usual on the flashlight. The beam was too weak to reveal much of the long corridor, creating deep, impenetrable shadows. Mulder made the light dance over what surface it could, finding nothing of interest until it hit the wall at the end.
The door on the right was closed. A light shone from around the frame and, as they edged closer, a shadow passed behind the door. Scully’s sharp inhale was loud in his ear. Footsteps sounded from inside, heavy soles tapping against the floorboards. Aiming the flashlight at the door, Mulder wiped his palm on his jeans before reaching out shakily for the handle. Scully’s fingers dug into his bicep; she was holding her breath nervously.
His fingertips made contact with the handle.
There was a loud bang from inside the room.
The flashlight died.
* * * * *
Continue to part two.
FANDOM: The X-Files
RATING: R
PAIRING: Mulder/Scully established
SETTING/SPOILERS: Set post-Brand X but pre-Requiem. Nothing extremely overt with regards to spoilers but there are references to the following: Squeeze, Tooms, Irresistible, Memento Mori, Redux II, Chinga, Fight the Future, How the Ghosts Stole Christmas, Millennium, Orison, Theef, all things, Brand X, and a slight dig at I Want to Believe.
OVERALL WORD COUNT: 35,603
DISCLAIMER: Everything belongs to Chris Carter, including the loose ends and the there’s-no-way-that-possibly-fits timeline.
SUMMARY: A quiet vacation in England begins with a ghost hunt as Mulder and Scully investigate the paranormal activity at Thurmere Hall.
A/N: This is the result of six months of semi-hard work, restless nights, and a plethora of emails to the following people, all of whom have been instrumental in getting this off the ground:
all_shine_on, hummingfly67,
mack_the_spoon, and
memories_child. Thank you also to those on my filter list who provided encouragement along the way, and to
greydawning and
newo_fic for the Big Bang support community that has been immensely useful. Finally, thank you to
memories_child and
truemyth for taking an idea and putting it out there for the rest of us to become a part of.
Based on a real place and true events (with a lot of creative licence).
Turn the lights off, sit back, and enjoy.
* * * * *
Ominous black clouds crowded in the sky above the sixteenth-century Manor House. Oak trees, their limbs bare yet plentiful, stood in the grounds nearby; the slightest breeze would have ruffled the leaves of the evergreens, hiding in the shadows of the taller trees, yet the air was still. The ducks were gone from the river next to the house and no wayward sparrow or blackbird called out into the darkness. The park, of which the house was at the centre, was usually teeming with wildlife, and even at seven-thirty on a drab October evening there could often be found the odd brave dog-walker or two, or birdwatchers with equipment both amateur and professional keeping an eye out for an owl or nightjar. Tonight there was nobody. Everything was motionless, muted, and Susan Dalton didn’t like it one bit.
She had lost track of time after seeing the last stragglers out and locking the doors of Thurmere Hall at five. If it wasn’t for the new exhibition arriving tomorrow, she would have followed them out and gone home herself, but the old display needed to be boxed and ready to be moved and the cases had to be cleaned for the new collection. Susan just knew she wouldn’t have time in the morning because visitors potentially started arriving at nine and then she had to be on hand to offer a guided tour or to answer any questions about Thurmere’s history. There was no way she could come to work early, not when she had to drop Hannah off at school at eight-forty-five and no earlier. The delivery had been due to arrive in fifteen hours; Susan had sighed to herself in resignation and begrudgingly wandered over to the east wing, the designated art gallery-cum-museum, to get to work.
She had been so immersed in carefully packaging the delicate objects that she was surprised to find two and a half hours had passed when she glanced at her watch. All that remained was for the shelves to be dusted and the glass casing polished, and then she could go home. Getting to her feet and stretching, Susan made her way to the cleaners’ storage cupboard, heels loud on the floorboards, echoing into the darkest recesses like a funeral bell. She rubbed her neck with one hand as she went. She was getting too old to be sitting on the floor for two hours at a time.
Arriving at the door, she selected the rarely used key from the ring on her belt and opened it, flicking the switch just inside. A dull light emitted from the naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. The small room was cluttered, to say the least, and for a moment Susan stared in disbelief at the mess. No one cleaner tended to stick around for longer than a couple of months for various reasons - another job suddenly came up, health problems, it’s just not working out - yet she was amazed anyone could find anything to clean with amid the chaos. The rest of the Hall was impeccable; there was a certain irony in the cleaners’ cupboard being the dirtiest in the whole house.
Susan started with an old shelving unit to her left. There were marks in the thick layer of dust that showed where a can of fluid had been dragged instead of lifted. Scanning the bottom shelves and finding neither a feather duster nor polish, she stood on tiptoes to see the top. The floorboards creaked a little in protest at the change in pressure but they remained firm. The top shelf yielded bleach, air freshener, some papier-mâché/wallpaper paste solution that should have been thrown out months ago, and… her fingers reached in earnest for a cylinder hidden behind a bottle of white vinegar… polish! Susan smiled in triumph.
She found a couple of old rags in a corner and the duster, oddly enough, inside the drum of a defunct washing machine half-hidden by plastic sheeting. By the time she had uncovered all she wanted, her skin and clothes were covered with age-old dust and a thin film of grease (she didn’t know where that had come from but she wasn’t about to start asking now). Tired and bedraggled, and more than ready to leave Thurmere Hall behind for the night, she crossed the small room to the sink under the window to wash off as much of the sticky substance as she could before admitting defeat and handing her suit over to the dry cleaner. She was pleased to find the taps still worked and she scrubbed her hands vigorously under the running water.
It was as she reached for a tissue to dry her hands she happened to look out of the window onto the courtyard below. A figure was walking across it.
Susan froze. The only way to get to the courtyard was through the house and she had locked the door hours ago.
Hadn’t she?
She was certain she had.
Had someone broken in?
She hadn’t heard anything but that didn’t mean much.
Were there more?
She held her breath, eyes riveted to the form illuminated by the courtyard lights, shadow long and black over the stone flags. Susan was fairly sure it was a female, judging from the shape and the clothes. She frowned. The dress looked familiar… Tudor-esque, perhaps. There were biannual re-enactments outside the Hall and the clothes were stored in the attic when they weren’t being used. The intruder must have broken in and taken them, Susan reasoned. But why? What would anybody want with an Elizabethan costume?
The woman in the courtyard stopped under one of the lamps and looked directly at Susan. Her eyes were sunken into her skull, covered by thin, pockmarked flesh that seemed to have been subjected to a torture rack, so taunt and strained it was to fit over her bones. She was so pale, even under the golden glow, and yet her eyes shone with an unnatural brightness, boring into Susan’s with such force that she almost took a step back but couldn’t bear to tear her gaze away. It was as though the woman was looking not at her but through her, into her soul and every fibre of her being, and a cold chill worked its way through her body, causing her to shiver and the tiny hairs on her arms to stand on end.
And then, under Susan’s scrutiny, the woman vanished.
* * * * *
Nine-sixteen on a Saturday morning, or so the alarm clock’s luminous red LCD digits claimed as they burned into her sleepy eyeballs. Why did the manufacturers make them so damn bright? At least it was the weekend and that in itself meant no chirpy, caffeine-fuelled DJ playing terrible music and even worse phone-in competitions. It was almost enough to compensate for the ridiculous lights. Her mind, still foggy with the vestiges of sleep, conjured up an image of the clock’s digits in a neon desert. Scully snickered softly to herself; they wouldn’t look out of place in Las Vegas.
She rubbed her bleary eyes and ran a hand through her mussed hair, taking in the empty space beside her. She had slept well and for a good eight hours - the doctor in her approved - and it would take a few minutes for her muscles to lose the natural lethargy that came with a decent night’s sleep, a rarity in her line of work. She glanced again at the clock on the bedside table and decided to lounge in bed, another five minutes, partly because she couldn’t find the energy to move just yet but mainly because she could and she so seldom had the opportunity.
The shutter blind at the window had been left open overnight and now weak rays of fall sunlight filtered in through the horizontal slats, stretching lazily across the floor and the blanket covering her body. Dust particles danced like fireflies in the musty air; too many out-of-town cases combined with the cool temperatures meant the apartment was overdue for a good airing out. She longed for a time when she could throw open the windows and feel the refreshing breeze swoop in to take away the nightmares that clung to the cobwebs as if they were dream catchers. The bad dreams were few and far between nowadays; her sleep was restful and not often permeated with horrific monsters and sick men, and although her recent re-encounter with one Mr Pfaster was still fresh in her mind, Scully was able to rely on her unconscious to keep him locked away while she dozed. She trusted herself more than jail cells.
Sighing softly, she tossed back the sheets and dragged herself from the comfort of the bed, pulling on a shirt she found at the foot of it. Her feet made little noise as she padded into the living room.
Mulder, dressed in jeans and a rumpled t-shirt, was seemingly engrossed by something on his computer screen. No discernible artist’s impression of Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster adorned the monitor to give her a clue as to where his interests lay that morning. It could be mothmen in Ohio or zombies invading upstate New York for all she knew, or maybe something as innocuous as the latest Knicks news or the batting averages for the Yankees in the ’87-’88 season. She never did know with Mulder. He was a matryoshka except he grew bigger with every layer she peeled off, revealing more of the whole instead of depleting it, never losing the essence of who he was despite her knowledge expanding like the universe as he granted her access to the wonderful workings of his mind. Sometimes she thought she could see it, heavy cogs straining with the magnitude of his tangential thoughts and ideas, his off-Broadway beliefs.
She pressed a kiss to the top of his head, sneaking a glance at the computer before perching on the edge of his desk and stealing his coffee.
“Good morning,” he said with a smile, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms across his chest.
“Morning,” she replied between sips of the hot liquid. “I didn’t think I’d sleep so long.”
“You were pretty out of it when I got up. I think the drool patch on my shoulder has just about dried,” he teased.
“It’s not my fault a certain somebody kept me awake until one in the morning.”
“Wasn’t it worth it?” A mischievous glint appeared in his eyes. Scully ducked her head, grinning, keeping silent yet answering his question all the same. Oh, it had most definitely been worth it, spending a Friday night with his head between her thighs and that wonderful tongue teasing her almost to the point of torture. She had gained her revenge later when she had taken him in her mouth, smiling around him as he muttered an unintelligible stream of sounds that may have included her name. And then when he had settled himself on top of her and entered her with one long, smooth stroke… she felt her toes curl just thinking about it.
Damn, but that man knew how to play her like a violin. When it came to her body, he was Itzhak Perlman himself.
Back to the room, Dana, she admonished as though she was coming out of a hypnotic trance (and perhaps she was). “What are you working on?” she asked, lifting her head to find him staring at her legs peering out from under his navy blue dress shirt, the one he had worn to the office yesterday and the one she had slid off his broad shoulders that very same evening. He touched her knee briefly; a ghost of a smile flashed across his face before he turned his attention back to the screen.
“I’ve received an email from a woman who works in a Grade One listed building in England called Thurmere Hall.” He explained, and then read: “It was built in 1575 by the Charnocke family, decorated with bay windows and the Ionic columns which even now flank the entrance, and was passed on through the generations until the early nineteenth century. It fell to Robert Smith-Bannister, who added the south wing and stuccoed the interior. He left the ceilings of the drawing room and the Great Hall alone, however, and the mid-seventeenth century plasterwork is still there to this day.”
He pulled up a photograph of heavy wreaths and disporting cherubs for Scully to look at. She put the coffee cup down and obligingly peered at the image. “I’ve never known you to be particularly interested in architecture alone.”
“Well, the house was gifted to the people of Charnley - that’s where this place is - in 1922 as a memorial to the men who had died during World War One. Since then the local council has maintained it. It’s rumoured Oliver Cromwell stayed there in the 1600s before going into battle.” He glanced at her to gauge her reaction.
“Mulder, just get to why you’re giving this credence. I assume it’s related to the paranormal,” she said, a bemused grin coming to the forefront at his delighted expression, “so please, enlighten me. A place that old must be haunted, right?”
“Oh, Scully,” he sighed happily, pleased she had said it even if she was mocking him. His hand snaked around her waist to pull her into his lap. He gave her a quick kiss before scrolling through the email on the monitor. “Susan Dalton is the visitor services officer at Thurmere Hall. Last Tuesday evening she was working late, packing up an exhibit of local artefacts, when she saw a woman walking across the courtyard.”
“I take it that’s unusual.”
“Highly. She locked the door before she started working, two hours earlier, and that’s the only way in and out. She later checked all the windows in case someone had broken in but there was nothing out of the ordinary.”
“So this woman in the courtyard had been in the building before she locked the door,” Scully said.
“Maybe,” Mulder conceded, “but that doesn’t explain why she was wearing a dress right out of a costume drama. Or how she vanished into thin air before Mrs Dalton’s eyes.”
“Vanished?”
He nodded. “Disappeared. Completely. One minute she was stood under a lit lamp and the next she just… wasn’t.” He smiled to himself at Scully’s frown; he knew her mind was sifting through the garbage for a plausible explanation, eyes bright and alert despite recently waking. He suspected teleportation wouldn’t be high on her list of theories. Maybe she would account for the shadows as a place to hide or she could question Mrs Dalton’s eyesight or mental health, or maybe she would even suggest an elaborate hoax or a prank carried out by bored teenagers. He still didn’t know, even after seven years of working together, how she would respond to his latest theory and he enjoyed the lack of predictability in their partnership, just as he suspected she did. After all, if you don’t use it, you lose it, Mulder mentally recited, remembering the motto one of his professors at Oxford used at the end of every tutorial.
And her mind was racing so fast he was amazed her synapses could fire in time.
“And how do you know this woman, this Mrs Dalton, is legitimate? How did she get hold of your email address, Mulder?” she finally asked, surprising him by not offering her opinion on the disappearing lady of the Manor. That was Scully, not tossing the obvious his way for him to toy with and rebuff.
His lips curved upwards ephemerally as he said, “Apparently her husband’s pretty big on paranormal phenomena. He’s from North Carolina originally and had read a couple of articles I wrote for Omni relating to ghosts and spirit manifestation. He suggested she contact me when she told him what happened. The Gunmen have already checked them out: they aren’t nutcases.”
Scully supposed she should be glad for the impromptu background check; the Gunmen meant well, even if them claiming someone was crazy brought to mind the words ‘pot’ and ‘kettle’. Mulder and Scully had examined far too much based on attention-seekers and time-wasters. “The husband’s interested in the paranormal - I take it she isn’t?”
Mulder shrugged. “She’s seen Ghostbusters.”
Scully stared at him for a moment like he had sprouted another head. “Mulder,” she said, “are you seriously considering investigating this?”
He rested his chin on her shoulder. “We both have vacation time stored up.”
“Yes, exactly. Vacation, Mulder. As in taking a break from work. Besides, this would mean going all the way to England.”
A low voice in her ear growled, “Remember what happened the last time I went to England? What happened when I came back?”
She felt a flush work its way up her neck. “I remember,” she murmured.
“Come on, we’ll go, spend the night, check it out, perform an exorcism if necessary, and then we’re free to enjoy the delights of the English countryside. It’ll be fun.” He gave her a gentle squeeze and looked at her expectantly.
She heard Quasimodo at work in the distance.
* * * * *
Their flight was delayed at Dulles and that was only the beginning. A storm kept them grounded for over an hour with nowhere to go and nothing to do but watch the rain pelt the windows and the lightning draw ever closer. A young girl two rows back let out an ear-piercing scream whenever the thunder hit. Scully winced and cursed herself for forgetting to pack Tylenol in her carry-on.
The turbulence was bad all across the Atlantic, almost as bad as the queasiness of her stomach. She wasn’t terrified of flying but the mechanics of keeping a plane in the air largely depended on a smooth ride; factor air pockets into the equation and the variable changed everything. Change could be a good thing but not when it involved nose-diving several thousand feet. But Mulder held her hand and let her use his shoulder as a pillow; he told her ancient ghost stories and she was lulled to sleep by the tone of his voice, as comforting to her now as the well-worn copy of Moby Dick she carted around with her as a child.
She landed in England but her suitcase didn’t. Typically, Mulder’s was one of the first bags off the line. He heaved it off the conveyor belt with a satisfied grunt and said, “One down, one to go. We’ll be out of here in no time.” His words were a curse: they stood at baggage claim for ninety minutes, watching the crowds disperse and the bags disappear. There was still no sign of her case. They traipsed to the other side of the airport to enquire about it and were told to go back to where they had come from; airport policy seemed to be ‘it’ll show up eventually’. Mulder, wise man he was, purchased some ridiculously overpriced coffee in an attempt to keep her temper at bay. He slung his arm across her shoulders as they walked. The belt was still moving when they got back. Her suitcase was making the rounds alone.
They managed to grab a taxi outside the terminal. The driver got out to help them with their luggage and once it was stowed away he asked where they were going.
“Thurmere Hall, in Charnley.”
His face went white, eyes wide and staring. “No, no, I don’t go there.”
“It isn’t far,” Mulder said.
“I don’t go there.”
“Why not?” Scully asked irritably. It had been a long day and all she wanted to do was check into that quaint B&B Mulder had found on the Internet. It was an hour’s drive away from Charnley and the four-poster bed sounded so inviting; spending the night in a four hundred and twenty five year old house instead (a four hundred and twenty five year old haunted house, she reminded herself) was beginning to sound more and more like a punishment for some unknown sin.
“I just don’t go there. Find another taxi. I don’t go there.”
Mulder opened his mouth to protest but Scully put a hand on his arm. “Let’s go.”
While he dragged their bags from the back of the vehicle, Scully wandered down the ranks and asked each driver if they would take her and her partner to Thurmere Hall. One sped off upon hearing the name. The majority refused outright, rolling up their windows and turning back to their newspapers. She was ready to commandeer a car to drive there herself when a voice behind her said, “I’ll take you.”
The big man, muscular and taller than Mulder, held her gaze but did not intimidate her. “You’ll take us to Thurmere Hall?” she asked as her partner took his place by her side, bags at his feet.
“I’ll take you.”
“If I may ask,” Scully said once they were on their way, “why did so many drivers refuse to go?”
“They’re very superstitious.”
“All of them?” Mulder questioned.
“If they weren’t when they first started on this job, they are now.”
“And why’s that?”
“Look,” their taxi driver said, glancing at them periodically through the rear view mirror, “certain places in these parts have reputations, and with good reason. I take it you’ve heard of the Pendle Witches?”
“Vaguely,” Mulder replied. “I think an old roommate might have mentioned them once or twice.”
“Happened not too far from here, back in 1612. A local woman named Alizon Device is walking through the forest up on Pendle Hill when she comes across a bloke, John Law, a peddler, and asks him for some pins. Well, it all kicks off, with her claimin’ she was gonna buy them off him and his family sayin’ she had no money and was beggin’ and stealin’, but a few minutes after they first meet, he suffers a stroke and blames her. Now, there’s already bad blood between the two families, real Capulet and Montague conflict if you know what I mean, and there’s some cursin’ on both sides, almost a dozen dead bodies thanks to witchcraft, if you listen to local lore, and next thing you know, you’ve got eleven people on trial with ten hangin’ from nooses by the time it’s through.”
Mulder had listened intently to the man’s story, had noticed how he dropped the ‘g’ from the ends of verbs when he was excited and losing himself in his tale of witchcraft and rivalry. He wondered if he did something similar, if Scully had picked up on a telling signal in his voice when he had the slide projector up and running and plane tickets in his pocket, a stamped 302 in a manila file. He’d have to ask her.
“It’ll be getting busy this time of year, though,” the driver warned. “Ever since a TV crew filmed up there on Halloween a couple of years back, there’ve been crowds every October. I think some of them are trying to recreate Blair Witch.” He chuckled.
“TV crew? Did they find something?”
“Depends on your definition of ‘something’. I swear, I’ve watched that damned show for months and whenever anything remotely interesting happens, it’s either off-camera or they go runnin’ the other way.” He shook his head. “The presenters seemed spooked enough - excuse the pun - but it’s a load of baloney if you ask me.”
“But it’s not far from Charnley?”
“Mulder!” Scully protested.
“What? I’m only asking where Pendle Hill is; if it’s on our way to the hotel then-”
“You said Thurmere Hall was it, the only paranormal activity you’d indulge yourself in for the week. You’d forget about work and the FBI and pending cases so we could spend some quality time together enjoying the English countryside.” Her voice was deliberately low, the tone the same one she used before a meeting with the AD when she told him to keep his temper under wraps. This time, he sensed she was struggling to control hers.
“Yeah, but-”
“Were they or were they not your words, Mulder?” She fixed him with a stare. He could see the driver out of the corner of his eye looking at the road and not the bickering couple in the back of his taxi. He’d probably seen it all before.
“They were, and I intend to uphold that, but while we’re here-”
“I’d rather not spend my week off traipsing through the woods with you. I know what happened the last time, and the time before that, and I am not prepared to do that again while we’re on vacation. We came here to get away from work; Thurmere Hall was a compromise, Mulder. If I go with you, you devote your time to relaxing for the rest of the trip instead of chasing ghosts and witches and God only knows what else.” She pinched the bridge of her nose and squeezed her eyes shut.
Instantly, his hand caught her wrist. “Are you okay, Scully?”
“Just a headache,” she muttered. “It’s been a long day.”
“And I haven’t made it any better by arguing with you, I know. I’m sorry.” He cupped her cheek despite the seatbelt digging into his side. “This is it, okay? You, me, Thurmere Hall, tonight. We walk out of there and we check into the B&B, and we lie on that bed with the fire roaring and the sheets pulled up to our noses and we sleep until we can’t sleep any more.”
“That sounds good,” she whispered.
He smiled. “I know it does. We’ll do it, I promise, just as soon as we’re done in Charnley.”
The rest of the forty-five minute trip was spent in silence save for the occasional explosion of a barking voice from the driver’s walkie-talkie. Mulder’s hand found Scully’s across the empty middle seat and he squeezed her fingers, encouraged when she curled her digits around his possessively. Once off the motorway, they drove along quiet roads, the glow from the streetlamps highlighting the shops and houses, until they too disappeared. The lights became less frequent; the landscape was reduced to barely visible fields. The roads narrowed until there was hardly room for one car, let alone another going the opposite way, and twigs from the bushes lining the road snapped at the windows. Even with the headlights on, the darkness seemed to advance and consume.
The driver suddenly took a left turn onto a bumpy dirt track, which thankfully didn’t take long to navigate, and the loose stones at the other end were slightly better for the car’s suspension. He pulled up on the secluded parking lot, keeping the engine running, and said, “I hear this place is haunted. That’s what the other guys tell me, at any rate. That’s why they won’t come near here.”
“Really,” Mulder replied, keeping a straight face more for Scully’s benefit than his own. He could tell by the stiff set of her shoulders and the lack of a smile in the past twelve hours she still wasn’t in the best of moods despite his efforts. To exuberantly overindulge in a bit of small talk about apparitions would place him firmly in her bad books, if he wasn’t there already, and they were supposed to be on vacation. Together. One disagreement in the back of a taxi was quite enough. He kept his voice relatively light as he enquired, “What have you heard?”, risking a glance at Scully only to find she was intently watching the driver, awaiting his response. He supposed she saw this as a case and she always gave her full attention to the work. Of course, it was also feasible she wanted to disprove any theories he might come up with as quickly as possible so they could leave and truly begin to unwind. After the disaster at the airport, he vowed to try and make that happen for her.
“There are rumours,” the driver said carefully, “and bear in mind they’re only rumours to me - I’ve never seen anything strange and I’ve been coming round these parts for twenty years - but a lot of people believe them, including the other guys driving taxis. They all claim to sense some weird shit, pardon my French, whenever they get close to the Hall. You know that shivering sensation, they say someone’s walkin’ over your grave? According to them, everyone here shivers even when it’s twenty-five degrees out and sunny. You’d think they all got pneumonia or something. Not many of them’ll talk about it and even fewer will bring you here, but one guy once told me he’s seen people, ghosts, materialise out of thin air, shadows walking past lit windows when it’s been shut up the night. I dunno, sounds like too many horror movies and stories told over campfires but something got them scared, that’s for sure.”
“But you don’t believe it? You’ve never felt anything?” Mulder asked.
“Can’t say I’ve seen anything out of the ordinary but I got to admit, there is something not quite right with Thurmere Hall.”
“What do you mean by that?” Scully enquired.
He unbuckled his seatbelt and turned to face them properly, eyes serious. “It’s a feeling you get when you go near the place, like you know something’s about to go wrong but you don’t know when or what or how. I can’t explain it, exactly; you’ll see when you get up there.”
They got out of the taxi, grabbed their bags, and paid the driver. Before he pulled out, he said, “You two needing a ride to your hotel later tonight?”
“Actually, we’re staying here overnight,” Mulder replied.
The driver stared at them. “You two gotta be the craziest tourists I ever had in my ride. You’re seriously staying here? Even after you heard all that shit?”
“Because of all that shit.”
“Rather you than me, my friends. Couldn’t pay me to spend the night in there.”
“Oh, we’re doing it voluntarily,” Mulder said cheerfully. “Thought it would be a rush.”
The driver looked at Scully. “Miss, forgive me for saying so, but you got yourself one mad hatter of a boyfriend.”
“This is nothing,” she replied dryly. “You should see him at home.”
He laughed. “Well, just be careful, alright? And if you need a ride tomorrow - if you make it outta there - you just give me a call and I’ll pick you up, take you wherever you wanna go.” He handed Mulder a scrap of paper with his number on.
“Thank you, we will.”
He took one last look before pulling away and out onto the open road again. “Crazy motherfuckers,” he said to himself with a smile, shaking his head.
Mulder and Scully watched the car until it disappeared from sight. Scully stamped her feet against the gravel in an attempt to warm up; there was no Indian summer in the North of England and she could see her breath condense as soon as it left her body. Above her head, a streetlight flickered once, twice, and then cut out completely. Mulder glanced up at it and then back at his partner.
“Let’s hope that’s not an omen.”
The other lights instantly shut down in perfect synchronicity. They were plunged into a rural darkness, made worse by the early nightfall at such a time of year and the heavy cloud cover above. Both listened intently for signs someone else was there but only the howling wind made a noise as it rattled the limbs of the deciduous trees a few yards away, their leaves already sacrificed to the elements. Stones grated underfoot as Mulder dug into his pockets and pulled out a flashlight, turning it on quickly. He couldn’t shake the feeling they were being watched, invisible eyes attuned to their every move.
Scully quirked an eyebrow. “You were saying?”
He slowly scanned the deserted car park. “Okay, that’s… how do you explain that?”
“Walk and talk, Mulder. It’s freezing out here.”
“If that cab driver’s to be believed, it won’t be any better once we get inside,” he said as he grabbed the handles of their cases and started to drag them across the loose stone to the narrow passageway leading to the Hall. Flanked by overgrown hedges and weeds, it was only wide enough for one person, and even then it was a squeeze. Mulder went first with his flashlight, the cases trailing behind him. “All this vegetation’s making me think we’re in the maze at the Overlook Hotel and some guy with a pair of shears is waiting for us at the other end. There’s something spooky about this place, Scully.”
“You haven’t even seen it yet,” she argued.
“How else would you explain our sudden descent into darkness back there?”
She muttered a curse as she tripped over a tree root. “A power failure, maybe. You have to consider how remote and isolated the Hall is; it must be fifteen minutes to the nearest building. We’re in the middle of nowhere, Mulder. They probably have blackouts all the time.”
“I don’t think it’s a blackout, Scully.”
She had been so intent on watching her feet she almost ran into the back of him, sidestepping at the last possible moment. “Why did you stop…”
Her gaze fell on the drab grey façade, impressively lit by bright yellow light coming from the ground floor windows which appeared to reach at least sixteen feet high when four were stacked, as was the case with the two battlement-esque towers that were part of the main structure. The building was constructed of simple stone blocks, possibly granite, with the quoins and even the mullions of the upstairs windows the same dreary shade. The balustrade framing the asymmetrical front was crumbling in places yet still gave the house an elegant air unlike any other despite its dourness. It wasn’t a terribly ugly building, by any means, and the sheer size and history of the place was unequivocal but it was still grim and bleak, especially in the darkness.
Scully half-expected to hear a hound baying nearby but there was just another sharp gust of howling wind that made her pull her coat tighter around her frame.
“First impressions?” Mulder asked.
“The Addams Family could live here,” she said, still eyeing up the house. Mulder barked out a laugh and nudged her shoulder.
“C’mon, it’ll be fun,” he said, and set off towards the defunct driveway. She followed him quickly, surprised when the loose stones they had been walking on suddenly turned to solid asphalt twenty yards away from the entrance and then to sandstone flags for the final few steps. It was as though someone had tried to modernise the place and make it easier for visitors but then couldn’t be bothered finishing the job. At least this was safer than before; Scully had thought she might break her ankle on the shifting balance of the stones, and that was with sensible shoes on in dry weather. In a month or so, in the heart of winter with a thin sheen of ice coating the ground, the short walkway would be a lethal tunnel, near impossible to cross.
Thurmere Hall loomed in front of them. The door could have been claimed from a monastery. It was made from thick, dark oak, the nail-studded wood tarnished with deep etches and grooves. A gothic-inspired lion’s head doorknocker sat proudly on the right hand side, its gaping mouth rusted. A single gold knob, also weathered, lay unobtrusively at waist-height. As Mulder knocked on the door with childlike glee, Scully took the time to take a closer look at the building.
The semi-octagonal towers that framed either side dwarfed the archway and the door that nestled underneath it. Peering inside, her face to the cold glass, Scully saw they housed bay windows. The window frames had been painted white a long time ago; they were now peeling but from a distance it was not noticeable. It had been a good idea, at least in principle; the colour had added a little light and brightness to the otherwise gloomy frontier and would have been likely to blind a first-time viewer to the obvious flaws. The Ionic columns Mulder had told her about were taller than both the door and the arch, coming to rest under the third row of windowpanes. A twin set of stone lions lay poised on top of the pillars, staring into the distance with permanent expressions of contempt on their frozen faces.
“If this place was truly haunted, Mulder, shouldn’t the door have suspiciously creaked open by now?” She crossed her arms over her chest.
He glanced at her and knocked again, loud and booming. “Maybe the poltergeists are on vacation. The lights are on but nobody’s home…”
“You did tell this woman we were arriving today, didn’t you?” Scully received a glare by way of a reply; she held her hands up in surrender and turned her back to the Hall, stepping onto the asphalt again. She exhaled loudly and rubbed her neck with one hand, attempting to soothe the aching muscles; sleeping on a plane never did serve well, even if Mulder did kindly offer his shoulder as a pillow. Now she had to spend the night awake in this godforsaken house - if they ever got in - when all she wanted was to feel the tips of her fingers again, have a decent meal in her stomach, and fall asleep next to her partner. Playing Dan Ackroyd to Mulder’s Bill Murray wasn’t exactly her idea of a good time, not least when they could be spending their vacation exploring England’s natural beauty and history.
Behind her, the door swung open. She swivelled to see a flushed middle-aged woman stood in the doorway, catching her breath.
“I’m so sorry,” she apologised immediately. “I was upstairs when you knocked. It takes a while to get down here. You’re Fox Mulder? Susan Dalton: pleased to meet you.” She held out her hand, which Mulder shook.
“This is my partner, Dana Scully.” He offered an introduction. “Scully?” he asked when she didn’t respond.
She was staring at one of the upstairs windows. “Mrs Dalton, is there anybody else here with you tonight?”
“No, just me. Why?”
“There’s somebody moving around upstairs,” Scully said calmly, keeping her eyes fixed on the glass. Mulder took a step back to look, Susan following, and as they watched a decidedly human silhouette slowly crossed from one side of the lit window to the other.
“When we arrived, there were no lights on upstairs at the front of the house,” Mulder said quietly.
“I didn’t go near there; I was working in the back,” Susan whispered, breathing heavily.
“You didn’t turn that light on?” Scully asked sharply.
“No.”
She and Mulder glanced at each other before moving for the door. “This way?” Mulder asked, already heading for the wide staircase with Scully hot on his heels, the large entrance hall echoing their footsteps from the stone floor.
“Top of the stairs, the door at the end of the corridor on the right!” Susan shouted, pulling their suitcases inside before shutting and bolting the heavy door behind them with nary a creak.
The landing at the top of the stairs was dark. Mulder pulled his flashlight from his pocket and flicked it on, the yellow beam illuminating first the floorboards and then the portraits on the walls: Christopher Columbus, William the Silent, Ambrogio Spinola. Scully’s breathing was loud and strong in Mulder’s ear as they slowly advanced down the shadowy hallway, Mulder’s knuckles white, his grip a little tighter than usual on the flashlight. The beam was too weak to reveal much of the long corridor, creating deep, impenetrable shadows. Mulder made the light dance over what surface it could, finding nothing of interest until it hit the wall at the end.
The door on the right was closed. A light shone from around the frame and, as they edged closer, a shadow passed behind the door. Scully’s sharp inhale was loud in his ear. Footsteps sounded from inside, heavy soles tapping against the floorboards. Aiming the flashlight at the door, Mulder wiped his palm on his jeans before reaching out shakily for the handle. Scully’s fingers dug into his bicep; she was holding her breath nervously.
His fingertips made contact with the handle.
There was a loud bang from inside the room.
The flashlight died.
* * * * *
Continue to part two.