Chapter Text
On mornings like these, Scully was grateful that her exposure to the outdoors on her way to work was limited. Autumn had come out swinging with an early, mid-October first frost and two straight days of cold, slushy rain, and more than ever she was grateful for the underground parking garage shielding her from the elements.
What it could not shield her from, however, was Mulder’s early-morning enthusiasm.
“Happy Halloween, Scully!”
“It’s October 16th, Mulder,” she responded as she set her bags down and hung up her wet, chilly coat. And 7:45 in the morning, she thought to herself. “While I appreciate your enthusiasm, October does not jump straight from your birthday to Halloween.” He shook his head with a smile and tossed a manila folder onto the desk in front of her. She opened it and saw coroner’s reports for three individuals, all of whom had died within the last fortnight.
“Guess how they died, Scully?” he asked energetically. She raised her eyebrows and skimmed the reports.
“I don’t have to guess… sudden cardiac death,” she said, reading the first report and flipping to the second. “Sudden cardiac death…” And to the third. “And… sudden cardiac death. You wanna tell me how these three are connected?” she asked. Based on the way he bounded over to his projector, she had a feeling he did. She tried very hard, but was only partially successful at concealing the smile that threatened to spread across her face. She would never admit it out loud, but she loved him like this.
“All three individuals died immediately after taking a ghost tour operated by Haunted Hayrides tours in Salem, Massachusetts,” Mulder said triumphantly, bringing up a slide of a large hayride bustling through Salem’s downtown historic district. Scully looked up at him, and now she was grinning.
“Salem, Mulder? Really?”
“Witch City!” he said, flipping to the next slide which featured a police car bearing the city’s emblem, a witch on a broom.
“So you’re saying a witch killed these people?” Scully asked dryly, her eyebrows nearly disappearing into her hairline. Mulder shrugged.
“Or a ghost. There’s a long history of blaming witches in Salem that I’d hate to repeat. What I do know is that all three victims went on a Haunted Hayrides ghost tour, and within a few hours all three victims were found dead of apparent cardiac arrest.”
“So none of them died on the tour,” Scully clarified, and he nodded. “Sometimes people die on vacation, Mulder. It’s odd, but it happens, especially in a city as full of tourists as Salem in the month of October.”
“Three otherwise healthy individuals with no known history of heart conditions?” he asked skeptically, nodding towards the files in her hands. “Besides, you’re missing one of the more remarkable features of their deaths. All three victims had looks of extreme fear on their faces when their bodies were found.”
“Oh I see, so you’re saying they were scared to death,” Scully said with a smirk.
“Perhaps,” he mused. “Or their hearts were stopped by something they saw in the last moments of life, so terrifying that it left the lasting expression on their faces even in death.”
“It is odd that nobody was actually seen having a heart attack,” Scully conceded as she flipped through the documents. “One was found in their hotel room, one was found in a locked single bathroom, and one was… in a confessional booth?” Scully looked up at him, and he nodded.
“Not a tourist, either,” he pointed out. “Father Jim O’Dell, the priest at All Souls Catholic Church.”
“Well… it’s odd, but not outside the realm of possibility,” she said. “But we’ve been on cases with thinner pretense, local police have asked us for help, and all this freezing rain is really getting to me, so let’s go to Massachusetts.” Mulder looked almost taken aback by the lack of further argument.
“You just want to go leaf-spotting,” he said suspiciously, and she was smiling.
“Now that’s definitely not outside the realm of possibility.”
+++
They were flying into Boston Logan International by late afternoon, and the weather couldn’t have been more different from the weather at Dulles when they left. It was cool and crisp, but the sky was a high, vivid blue and the sunshine abundant. It was the best kind of autumn day in New England, and she would take it. The waning sun was shining through the bright orange leaves of the maples outside the police station as they made their way inside, making it appear to be on fire.
“Tom Avery,” the Chief of Police introduced himself as he shook their hands in turn. He was short and broad, with a ruddy complexion and vivid blue eyes. What little hair he had left was still a light, boyish blond. “Thanks for coming up. I’m not even really sure if there is a case, to be honest, but if there is and we get caught sitting around with our thumbs up our asses… bad for tourism, you know? Nobody wants to be the mayor from Jaws. ” Mulder chuckled and nodded in agreement.
“Chief, are any of the victims–or whatever may be the case–still in the morgue?” Scully asked. He nodded.
“Yeah, they hung onto Father O’Dell down in the morgue at Salem Hospital. Normally they’d get transported to the Chief Medical Examiner in the city, but since it’s technically not considered a wrongful death, he’s still here,” Avery said. “Damned if I know what’s going on, I just get a weird feeling about it. I mean, I’m used to weird, it’s Salem… but still.”
“What does that mean?” Scully asked, arching a brow curiously.
“Well, weird is in our blood, miss,” the Chief said with a laugh. “Our biggest claim to fame is a mass witch hysteria that led to the hangings of 19 people, and as a result this place is a non-stop Halloween party for the entire month of October. You can’t swing a cat without hitting a coven, psychic medium, tarot card reader, or some other kind of weirdo in this town. Now I’m not saying it means there’s anything happening here other than a bizarre coincidence, but that being said, I’d like to make sure it’s that before we move on.”
They parted ways with the Chief, promising to bring him any new information they may find, and got back in the car, headed to the small regional hospital that served the township and outlying areas. By the time they parked and headed inside, the sun had dipped below the horizon–autumn darkness came early in this part of the country.
“Do you miss this?” Scully asked as they headed inside, their coats tight around them against the nippy breeze.
“What?” he asked.
“New England autumns,” she clarified. He shrugged.
“They’re nice,” he agreed. “I wouldn’t say I miss it, though. I don’t have a lot of fond associations with this area, to be completely honest.” He looked down at his feet as they waited for the elevator to take them down into the basement, and Scully frowned a little. She reached out and squeezed his upper arm briefly, and he looked up to her eyes and gave her a fond smile which she returned.
It was always like this between them–the looks, the little touches, the smiles–and Scully sighed as she considered that they might be stuck in this holding pattern for life. After six years, she wasn’t sure what exactly needed to happen to break them out of that pattern and into a new, more romantic one… or how to even go about it… or if she even could. Certainly the arrival of Diana had complicated matters, although in her heart of hearts she knew he wasn’t really interested in Diana, in spite of her obvious renewed interest in him. But his unflagging loyalty to her still cut like a knife, even if it wasn’t romantic in nature. It still gave her pause.
The medical examiner had not yet left for the evening, and so was present to meet with them for questioning. He was tall and thin, with long, delicate fingers, almost spider-like hands. He spoke softly, as though afraid to wake the dead surrounding him, and his eyes were a soft, hazy grey. He himself looked not far from the grave, and Scully almost wondered if it was by association.
“I conducted the examinations of all three bodies, yes,” he said with a grunt as he helped Scully wheel Father O’Dell’s remains from his little cubbyhole out onto an exam table. “All three appear to have experienced sudden cardiac death, most likely from an abrupt event such as cardiac arrest. No signs of aneurysm, pulmonary embolism, stroke, or any other cause of death. No suspicious external findings. No sign of poisoning. None had known heart conditions, and none were particularly old, so yes, it is odd. But nothing in any of the examinations gave me any reason to suspect foul play. They all appear to be natural deaths.”
“Thank you, Dr. Farmer,” Scully said, beginning an external examination of the body. She wasn’t inclined to repeat the pathologist’s exam–based on both his description and his written reports, she felt the exams were conducted in a competent and thorough manner. Mulder asked him a few more questions about the conditions the bodies were found in, but by the end of it neither he nor Scully were particularly convinced that anything was missed. This left Scully comfortable that there was nothing amiss more than a strange coincidence; Mulder, naturally, was not.
“Let’s stop for tonight and get dinner and settle into the hotel. Tomorrow we can question the people who found the bodies and the hayride operator,” Mulder suggested, and Scully agreed–although she didn’t think it was really necessary to investigate much further, dinner and a bed sounded good right now. They could conduct interviews tomorrow morning, wrap things up, and hopefully come back to better weather in D.C. by nightfall.
+++
Dinner was a greasy spoon with an enormous wait time–Salem in October–and finding accommodations was nearly impossible. The first four hotels they tried were completely booked, and by the time they walked through the door of the fifth, Scully was toast–her head hurt, her feet hurt, and all she wanted was to lie down. If this woman tells us there are no rooms available, I’m pulling out my gun, she thought to herself as they approached the front desk. An older woman with hair in tight curls and a witch’s hat atop her head greeted them warmly.
“Reservations?” she asked in a chipper voice, and they shook their heads.
“Do you have anything available?” Mulder asked with some exasperation. The woman gave him a patient, bemused smile.
“You came to Salem in October without making a reservation?” she asked as though he were crazy. He flashed his badge in response.
“We’re working,” he said, and she sighed.
“Let’s see what I can do…” She clicked through a fairly new-looking computer, scanning the screen intently. “Here we go! We have exactly one open room, as long as you don’t mind the fact that there’s a huge stain in the middle of the floor. It’s not blood!” she said abruptly, then chuckled nervously. “It’s really not, it was a Halloween costume mishap. Looks like blood though, which is why we haven’t booked the room yet. That is unfortunately the best I can do.”
“We’ll take it,” Scully said quickly before Mulder even had the chance to turn and look at her, and slapped her Bureau credit card on the counter.
“Is it just me, or did the way she said ‘it’s not blood’ make you feel like it’s definitely blood?” Mulder muttered as they walked away from the desk, room key in hand. Scully smirked.
“Mulder, I’m so tired right now that I wouldn’t care if there was a dead body in the middle of the floor,” she responded with a groan.
And while there was no dead body, there was the aforementioned giant maroon stain in the middle of the carpet which did, in fact, look like blood. There was also exactly one bed, a queen, and no couch to speak of. Great.
“Oh,” was all Mulder said as they set their things down on the floor. “No couch… hmmm. I can sleep in that chair, Scully, if it makes you more comfortable…”
“No,” she sighed. “You won’t sleep at all like that, and you’ll wake up with your neck bent like a pretzel. We’re adults Mulder, we can sleep in the same bed. We just won’t mention it in the report,” she said with a wan, exhausted look. He nodded, and was it just her imagination, or was he blushing? No, it wasn’t her imagination–he was definitely blushing. She wondered to herself the reason as she fished her pajamas out of her go bag, Was he uncomfortable? Was he nervous? What was he feeling? He could be so exuberant and open with his emotions sometimes, but other times, he was a locked door.
Yes, he had almost kissed her in the hallway outside of his apartment… and yes, he had said he loved her after she rescued him from the Bermuda Triangle… but he was under extreme emotional duress in both of those instances, and they’d never discussed it again after the fact. How could she trust that to be a true, honest examination of his feelings towards her? Wouldn’t he say or do anything to keep her from leaving? And what did that mean? She shook her head a little; this wasn’t the right time to be mulling this over, right before she climbed into bed with him. Not the right time at all. (Maybe there was never going to be a right time.)
She changed into an oversized FBI t-shirt and flannel pajama bottoms, and couldn’t help but chuckle when she saw Mulder come out of the bathroom wearing… the exact same thing. He looked up at her and barked in laughter.
“You’re joking,” she said, gesturing towards his outfit, and he grinned.
“You know what they say about coup–uh, about coworkers, uh, people who spend so much time together,” he slipped before realizing what he was saying. Now his face was burning red, and Scully could feel the heat creeping up from her chest to her neck and face as well. She just averted her gaze and tried not to smile as she climbed under the covers. She felt his weight shift the bed as he climbed in too, and he stretched and sighed next to her.
“Jesus, I’m beat,” he said, and she hummed in agreement, turning off the lamp on her side of the bed.
“Good night, Mulder,” she said, curling up on her side on the very edge of the bed. He was so big, and took up so much more space than she expected him to. He didn’t feel that much bigger than her when they were upright and working–maybe it was the heels, or maybe it was just the fact that he never made her feel small. But in bed together, now, it was impossible to miss. He was huge.
“Good night, Scully,” he almost whispered from the other side of the bed, turning off his lamp and casting them into darkness. Outside they could hear shouts and laughter and revelry from the street below–Chief Avery was right, this place was a non-stop Halloween party in October. Inside, all she could hear was the soft sound of his breathing behind her. If she had been paying enough attention, she would’ve realized that the sound did not settle into the slow pattern of sleep for a very long time.