by: Margaret

Bo drove quickly to Rhuebottom’s store. Since most of the day had been spent
checking over the General, and since Rhuebottom shut his store down before any other
business in town, Jesse concluded that shopping for food was the family’s first priority.
Cooter was there for the Dukes 24 hours a day. Rhuebottom was not.
Bo pulled Dixie into the parking lot and came to a slow stop next to an empty yellow
school bus. He felt better now; the queasiness in his stomach had subsided as he drove.
Driving always seemed to ease his worries. He could also see that the whole family was
more relaxed now that they were in town with other people around. Daisy whipped out a
short grocery list from her purse and with graceful ease swung herself out of the car.
“Let’s get this over with, y’all,” she started off.
Luke and Jesse wordlessly followed. Scully stared at the wooden building for a while.
It looked like something out of a western movie. When she realized that she was going to
have to buy her clothes in there, she swallowed hard. However, always one to go with the
flow, the red-haired doctor shook her head and hopped out of the vehicle, following the
others inside.
Mulder stayed behind. Bo cast a curious look at his friend and saw that the agent
stared in dismay at bales of hay that stood next to an outdoor freezer. He couldn’t help a
grin. “Fox, what’s wrong?”
Fox raised his eyebrows, and without breaking his gaze from the hay, replied, “We’re
shopping for food… in there?!”
Bo chuckled. Lord, Fox was such a clueless city slicker. He reached over and playfully
slapped his friend on the shoulder. “Of course we’re shopping in there. It’s the only
grocery store in town.”
Mulder grinned. “Sorry, I just never shopped in a place that sold ice cream and hay in
the same aisle before.”

Bo gave his friend another playful nudge. He turned to jump out of the jeep… when a
flash of blonde hair raced past him to the corner of a building. The young farmer froze.
He rubbed his eyes, thinking he was seeing things. He followed the path that he thought
he’d seen the streak of gold race across, and when he stared at a group of trashcans
positioned next to each other, he saw her. It was little Goldilocks, crouched close to the
floor on all fours like a cat in hiding. From the skinny cracks between the trashcans, she
watched the men disembark. Bo squinted and gazed at the green eyes that peered from
street corner. There was no longer any sadness in them. Just fear… fear so passionate it
flared brightly in the child’s stare. “Little girl!” he called after her. He hopped out of the
car and jogged after her. This time, the child didn’t spare a second to talk to him. She
gasped, obviously horrified that her hiding place had been found, and broke around the
corner down the street. Bo chased her. He wanted to catch her and make her see that he
wasn’t a threat. He just wanted to help. He grabbed the corner of the building, whipped
around the street, and skidded to a stop. Except for the faint “meow” of a cat, the alley
was empty. There wasn’t a sign of a human being in sight. Bo shook his head. He couldn’t
believe this was happening again. Where in the world did she go?
“Bo! What’s wrong! What is it?!”
The young farmer turned around and saw Mulder standing behind him with his gun
drawn. Bo quickly jogged to the lawman’s side. He grabbed the firearm and immediately
pushed it back in Fox’s pant pocket.
“Fox! Would you put that thing away!” he nervously muttered as he looked around to
see if anyone else had seen the weapon. “You’re gonna cause a scene!”
“What’s wrong!” Mulder insisted as he hesitantly shoved his sidearm away. “Who are
you running after?”
Bo took a step back. “Didn’t you see the little girl?”
Mulder shook his head. “What little girl?”
“The little girl with long blonde hair and…” Bo stopped. He could see by the look on
Mulder’s face that the lawman had no clue what he was talking about. He turned Fox
around, grabbed him by the shoulder, and led him towards the store. “Never mind. I guess
the sun’s playing tricks on me. Let’s just get the groceries and get the General fixed.”
The two men jogged across the asphalt and up a flight of wooden stairs. The old wood
creaked at their steps, and as they opened the door to enter the store, the rusty hinges
gave a loud moan and the voices of children greeted the two shoppers. Young teenagers,
all around the ages of fourteen and fifteen, swamped the store. The public school of
Hazzard had declared today a field trip day, and after spending the morning in the local
museum, the kids were enjoying a quick snack from Rhuebottom’s candy counter.
Giggling girls with swaying ponytails and boys with old sneakers and slicked-back hair
snaked their way around the aisles with arms full of potato chips and candy bars. Mulder
peered over the tops of the aisles trying to catch a glimpse of his partner. Instead, he saw
something else.
On a stand in the center of the store, a large red sign broadcasted the event of a sale.
The large, paint sprayed letters read: BIG X SALE. ALL ITEMS 50% OFF.
Mulder stood still, and his eyes locked on the letter X. His head seemed to spin at that
moment, and the store with all the kids just faded away. The sight brought back the pain
of losing his beloved X-files, and he might have stayed in that trance had Bo not shaken
him out of it.
The young farmer saw the sight Mulder stared at. He quickly made his way to his
friend’s side and gave him a small jiggle. Mulder snapped to attention.
“What?”
Bo looked at his friend and shook his head. “Fox,” he said softly. “Can’t ya at least just
TRY and forget about work?”
Mulder forced a grin on his face. “Oh, I wasn’t thinking about that!” he lied. “I was
just admiring the scenery. Nice little country store. Bunch of bratty kids. Dana actually
shopping in this store! Now that’s scary!”
The young farmer immediately saw through the fib. He wanted to say something, but
decided against it. He took Luke’s advice to heart and decided to play along with the fib.
“Yeah, that is scary,” he finally said. Bo saw his family and Scully in the corner talking to
Rhuebottom next to the hotdog stand. He grabbed Mulder by the arm and pointed.
“They’re over in the corner.”
Mulder nodded and started making his way towards the group while Bo followed
behind him.
Riiiiiiiip. Bo stopped in his tracks, and this time Mulder did too. Rip. Rip. Riiiiiiiip.
Fox spun around. “What is that?!”
Bo shrugged and scanned the aisles and kids, looking for the source of the noise. He
couldn’t see where it was coming from. “It… it sounds sorta like a big zipper,” he said
struggling with the puzzle.
“No,” Fox replied while he scratched his head. “It sounds more like… someone’s
tearing cloth or something…”
An invisible hand with the strength of a grizzly bear shoved each man in the shoulder.
Bo and Mulder fell violently backwards at the force of the blow. Mulder tried to regain
his balance, but Bo crashed into him and both men went tumbling into a stack of soup
cans. The force of their fall pummeled the shelves. The metal ledges caved in on
themselves while the soup cans exploded outward across the floor.
Bo tried to get up on his knees, when the invisible hand attacked him again. It pushed
him relentlessly back on top of Mulder. Bo spun around, ready to hit whoever the
mystery person was, but didn’t see anyone. Instead, three feet in front of him, he saw… his
clothes?
He glanced down and saw that the only thing he and Mulder had on were their boxers
and boots ~ nothing else! Mulder straightened up, felt a chill, glanced down at his bare
chest, and freaked out. He gasped. “WHAT IN THE NAME OF…”
From around the corner, the mob of school kids rushed towards the commotion of
exploding cans. When they saw the men sprawled out on the floor, they fell into a still
stupor. For a second, the young women in the group were horrified, but when Bo stood
up, silly grins spread across their faces, and in unison the ponytailed youths swooned
dreamily “WOOOOOOOW!”
Jesse, Luke, and Dana raced around the corner. When they saw the two men wearing
only their underwear, their mouths gaped wide open. Daisy and Rhuebottom brought up
the rear, and when they stared at what everyone was looking at, the two of them
screamed in shock. The teachers came running down the aisles at all the commotion, and
soon their horrified shrieks echoed alongside Daisy and Rhuebottom’s yells.
Bo turned to Mulder. He had to get both of them out of there right now. “FOX! GET
ON YOUR FEET! WE GOTTA GET OUTTA HERE!”
Mulder didn’t move. He was so scared he was catatonic. Bo grabbed him by the
shoulders and hauled him to his feet. He dragged the dazed lawman across the floor to
the front door. He quickly snatched the handle, swung it wide open… and came nose to
nose with a group of nuns fresh out of church and ready to do some shopping.
The brown-clothed sisters screamed at the sight of the young farmer. Some of the
nuns crossed themselves, while the older ones nearly died of a heart attack. Bo slammed
the door in their faces. He spun around, dragged Mulder through the gauntlet of teacher
and kids, and burst out the back door into the alleyway.

**

The second Luke quietly slipped out the back of the store, he headed straight for
Dixie, keeping his head bowed low the whole way. It was not easy slipping away from
the crowd while Daisy, Uncle Jesse, and Dana braved the onslaught that Bo and Mulder
had instigated with their exit. Because Hazzard was such a small town, a lot of the kids’
parents had arrived on the scene demanding an apology and an explanation. Rhuebottom
and the nuns were outraged. The schoolteachers threatened to sue. Uncle Jesse was just
as bewildered and horrified as the angry crowd that surrounded him, and the poor old
farmer faced the hordes of protestors with absolutely no idea what to say.
It was an ugly scene that was getting uglier by the second. And though Luke felt bad
about leaving everyone in the lurch with an angry mob, he knew he had to find Bo and
Fox and just get everybody out of town as soon as possible. He jogged over to the
roofless jeep and glanced in the backseat. Nothing.
“Pssst! Luke!”
Luke turned towards the alleyway and saw the two heads of Bo and Fox peeping out
of a large dumpster. Pale and covered up to their waists in trash, they both frantically
waved him over, and he jogged quietly to the large trash can. “What are you two doing in
there?”
Bo sighed in exasperation, rolling his eyes. “Looking for lunch. What do ya think
we’re doing? We’re hiding!”
“Did you get our clothes?” Mulder anxiously asked. He nervously rubbed his arms as
he shot jittery glances up and down the alleyway.
“Are you kidding? Your clothes are ripped to shreds! And by the way, since we are
talking about your clothes, y’all mind explainin’ to me why you two decided to rip your
pants off and walk around downtown IN YOUR BIRTHDAY SUITS?!”
“We didn’t do it!” Bo emphatically denied. “We didn’t rip our clothes off! Our clothes
ripped themselves off!”
Luke squinted. He had to have heard wrong; that didn t make sense. “What?”
“Mulder!”
The men spun around and saw Dana Scully bounding towards them from around the
corner. Mulder gasped, dove head first into the trash, and covered himself in debris. Bo
grabbed a flimsy cardboard box and hid behind it. “Dana! What are ya doin’?!” the young
farmer yelled in alarm.
Luke quickly jogged in front of the red-headed cannonball, preventing her from
advancing any further. “Dana! Please! The guys ain’t decent right now!”
Scully put her hands on her hip. “Oh, get over it!” she called indignantly. “I m a
doctor, for crying out loud! Mulder! What are you doing? I took care of you when you
were in the hospital!”
“This is different!” the lawman’s voice yelled back from a stack of sooty newspapers.
Dana sighed in exasperation, threw her hands up in the air, and angrily stormed
around the corner away from the scene. As she exited, Jesse Duke tromped onto the
scene, his red hat clenched tight in his fist and his face flushed and flustered. “Fox
Mulder and Beauregard Duke!”
“Uh-oh,” Bo cowered near the corner of the dumpster while Mulder’s head peeped up
from the trash.
“Do you two have any idea HOW MUCH TROUBLE YOU BOTH ARE IN?”
Bo threw his hands into the air. He was so frustrated it looked like he was about to
pop. “We didn’t do it, Uncle Jesse! Fox and I didn’t do nothin’! We were shanghaied! ”
Fox grabbed the rim of the dumpster and pulled himself up out of the debris. “Listen
to your nephew, Mr. Duke! He’s telling the truth! I would never in MY LIFE pull a stunt
like this! I mean, my God, I’ve had nightmares of days like this! I just woke up a few days
ago in a cold sweat because I dreamt of standing in the middle of a crowd without any
clothes on!”
Bo stiffened at the statement. He turned to his friend. “You… you dreamt of this? Of…
of us being caught in public with our pants down?”
His voice was hollow with shock, and Luke immediately picked up the tremble on his
younger cousin’s voice. Mulder, however, was oblivious. He buried his head in his hand
and miserably replied, “Yes.”
“I dreamt that I was driving the General when all of a sudden the car got a mind of it’s
own. I tried to stop, but the car wouldn’t let me. And then the General tried to run down
my family!”
Mulder shot straight up at the statement and stared into Bo’s dark blue eyes, which
were now glazed over with fear.
Luke swallowed hard, feeling a strange dread slowly rising up inside of him. “Why do
I get the feeling this freaky situation ain’t no coincidence?”
“Because it’s not!” Mulder forcefully verified. He pounded his fist into the metal trash
bin in an attempt to emphasize the point.
Jesse warily wrung his hat in his hands. This whole day was obviously beginning to
unnerve him. “What’s going on here?”
“I don’t know,” Luke said scratching along his jaw in worry. “But we need to get out of
here and find some place quiet where we can think this through. Uncle Jesse, why don’t
you get the guys some clothes while I round up the girls, and then we can all go home
and get to the bottom of this.”
Jesse left immediately, and Bo watched his older cousin follow briskly behind his
gruff but shaken uncle. As the men disappeared around the corner, an uneasy gnawing
scraped hard inside the young farmer’s stomach. Luke was on the warpath. The veteran
was determined to get the bottom of the mystery, and Bo had no doubt that he would.
Luke always found solutions, that wasn’t a concern. The problem was that Bo wasn’t sure
if he wanted to see the answer to the day’s questions. Part of him wanted to stay in the
trash can and just hide there till sundown. Instinct told him that something bad was after
him and Fox Mulder, something worse than the Plague. And Bo feared his unknown
attacker with the passion of a little child who fears the imaginary monsters hiding in his
closet.

**

Before, his mind had been racing. Now, Fox Mulder’s thoughts were breaking the
sound barrier. Jesse returned with two generic gray sweatsuits from the store
(miraculously Rhuebottom agreed to sell the clothing to him), and after Bo and Fox put
their clothes on, they jogged to the jeep while under the cover of their friends and family.
After Daisy made sure everyone was inside her car, she flew out of town so fast that
Dixie left skid marks from the store to the dirt road.
Above the roar of the breeze that blew through everyone’s hair as the roofless jeep
made a mad dash toward home, Bo tried to explain how the terrifying events of the
morning had happened first in his head the night before. Mulder didn’t listen to a word
that was said. The young farmer’s voice, the violence of the blowing wind, all were
drowned out by the frantic, silent workings of his mind. Everyone in the car grasped
desperately to any shred of rational explanation that could be used to explain what
happened in the store. Mulder knew their bantering was useless. There was no rational
explanation here. This WAS an X-file.
Witches? A curse? A magical spell? No, it couldn’t be. There were no charms in the
house, no amulets that he could see. Aliens? Impossible. *Get real, Fox. You’ve got aliens
on the brain again.* A ghost? Maybe… but there was no history of hauntings in Hazzard.
Still, there was a slight possibility there. He and the Duke clan could be watching the
birth of a new paranormal portal. Mulder had seen ghosts before. None of them were
friendly, and the thought of a new haunting worried him and made his stomach churn.
The sudden stop of the car jolted him out of his daydreaming, and when he looked up
he was surprised to see that he was back at the farm. He took his time disembarking,
opting to be the last one out of the vehicle. The rest of the gang didn’t. They downright
hurried out. It seemed as if everyone was on the edge of a panic attack.
Luke was the first one on the front porch and through the door into the kitchen.
Without breaking a beat of his hurried step, he headed straight for the CB. The train of
people behind him stood around the kitchen table as Luke brought the mic to his mouth
and called. “Cooter? Cooter, this is Luke. Are ya there?”
There was a second of silence, and then a chipper voice replied, “This is Craaaaaaazy
Cooter comin’ back atcha. What’s up, big guy?”
“Cooter.” Luke took a second, visibly trying to collect his thoughts. “Cooter, we need
your help. There’s somethin’ weird going on around here, and… there’s something wrong
with the General. Bo and I are about to take him apart, and… well… we need your eye to
give him a good look-over.”
“You’re taking the General apart?! Oookaaay, you’re scaring me, Luke. What the heck
is going on?”
“I don’t know,” the veteran replied as he wearily rubbed his forehead. “We just really
need you here.”
The seriousness of the situation lay thick in Luke’s voice, and the tone of it knocked
Cooter’s playful manner off the radio. “Look,” the mechanic said with uncharacteristic
solemnity. “I have a couple of cars to work on right now, but as soon as I finish up with
them, I’ll be at your door.”
Luke smiled. “Thanks buddy. I knew we could count on you.”
With that, the radio went dead. Luke put the mic down and turned to the people
standing behind him. His family and friends huddled around the table and looked silently
at him for leadership. The oldest cousin leaned against the wall and shrugged.
“I guess we wait now,” he said, answering their silent question.
“I think we have to do more than that.”
It was the first time Fox had spoken on the subject matter, and all heads turned
curiously toward the new voice. The agent walked boldly from the back of the crowd to
the middle, and as he talked, he looked specifically at Scully.
“I think it’s time that we call in the guys.”
Scully’s eyebrows raised up in surprise. “Why?”
“Who’s ‘the guys’ ?” Daisy asked.
“My friends,” Mulder replied. “Frohike, Byrnes, and Langley.”
“Oh,” Bo said with a smile that came from recognition. “You mean the Lone
Rangers!”
“Gunmen.” Fox and Dana corrected.
Bo waved them off. “Whatever.”
Dana crossed her arms and sighed. “I suppose you want your laptop computer?”
Fox nodded. “There’s no other way to get on the Net.”
Scully responded with a wordless nod and headed for the bedroom in the rear of the
hallway. Her high heels clicked against the floor as she walked. Jesse took his red hat off
and nervously wrung it in his calloused hands. “Fox,” the old man asked, “what do ya
think is going on here?”
Fox sighed, wincing. “I’m not sure,” he said truthfully. “But whatever is happening and
whoever is doing this is just starting. Our mysterious attacker is just getting warmed up.
And unless we act fast, things are going to get a lot worse.”
The sound of hollow heels signaled Scully’s return. She made her way to the kitchen
table with her arms around a compact Pentium II IBM clone. She gently pushed a small
flower and vase set aside, and laid the black computer gently on top of a
checkerboard tablecloth.
“Mr. Duke, I need to borrow a phone line,” Mulder started.
Jesse quickly trotted to the telephone near the counter and took the socket out of the
wall. He handed the cable to Fox, and the FBI agent went straight to work. He opened a
casing in the rear and pulled out small speakers and a video cam the size of his fist. He
finished plugging his computer up, and with a flick of the machine, the monitor blinked
and a WELCOME TO WINDOWS NT sign popped on the screen.
The Duke kids were enthralled ~ computers were not normal Hazzard County style,
much less the Internet. Bo, Luke, and Daisy slowly huddled around their sitting
houseguest as Fox’s fingers breezed through the keyboard and icons and as images
flashed quickly across the screen at his command. With the click of the mouse, the
scratchy sound of an internal modem went off, and soon a blue AOL sign-on screen came
on.
“Scully,” Mulder beckoned as he typed on the login prompt. “Do you have the
Gunmen’s address?”
Scully turned around and headed back for the bedroom to get her little black book.
Mulder hit a button on his mouse, and an electronic “welcome” sounded off… along with
a pop up message from ‘The Buddy List’. Mulder mouthed the user name on the screen,
and his hands fell off the keyboard.
“What is that?” Daisy asked as she leaned over Fox’s shoulder.
Mulder was silent. “It’s my MOM!” he finally said in disbelief.
He hit the button on the electronic screen, and what came next made Daisy gasp. The
image of an old, haggard woman in a tattered house dress stared blankly at the people in
the room. Her cheeks were red, her skin deathly pale, and tears fell down her skin like oil
pressed from olives. She looked like the victim of some natural disaster. Like the
unfortunate faces one sees on a news show of people whose lives have been devastated
by a tornado or hurricane, so too did this woman carry the haunting, broken demeanor of
a soul ripped asunder. Mulder’s jaw dropped.
“MOM?! WHAT’S WRONG?!”
The woman stared at her son, as if confused as to who the stranger staring at her from
the other side of the screen was. “Fox.” She stopped. She had to take a few breaths to
control a sudden wave of weeping. She dabbed her eyes with a crumpled clump of
kleenex clutched tightly in her fist, and with a few more breaths and a lot of effort, she
finally blurted. “It’s your sister’s birthday next week!”
Daisy suddenly recoiled, sensing that things had taken a sharp turn for the worse.
Mulder tensed at the statement, locked in the accusatory gaze of his mother’s stare. He
swallowed hard, and after a spell of silence meekly replied. “Yes?”
“Do you know how long she’s been missing, Fox? Do you know how long?” The old
woman lost control of her sorrow. A stream of tears flowed anew down her cheeks and
chin, leaving streaks of blush down the nape of her neck.
Mulder stared at his sobbing mother in stunned disbelief. He turned around and saw
that his hosts were also staring in bewilderment at the almost surreal scene. The lawman
pushed his chair back, suddenly embarrassed by the crowd. He stood on his feet and
reached for the computer’s on/off switch. “Mom, this isn’t the time or the place. I’m going
to get my cell phone, and we’re going to continue this in private.”
Jesse immediately made his way to his niece and nephews. He tried to corral them out
of the room. “Kids, why don’t we give some space to Fox and his mom.”
“IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT, FOX!” The woman’s angry, grief-stricken voice brought all
movement in the room to a standstill. “IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT! WHY DIDN’T YOU
DO ANYTHING? WHEN THEY TOOK YOUR SISTER AWAY, WHY DIDN’T YOU
TRY TO STOP THEM? WHY DIDN’T YOU EVEN TRY?”
Mulder started shaking. Like a little boy on the verge of being grounded, he fell back
into his chair in a ball. His eyes brimmed with tears of both pain and confusion. “Mom,
what are you doing? Where is this coming from?”
“ANSWER THE QUESTION, FOX! WHY DIDN’T YOU HELP YOUR SISTER?”
Fox swallowed hard. He forgot about the Dukes standing behind him and threw all
self control out the window. Like a guilty child trapped by a scolding parent, he begged
for understanding and forgiveness. “Mama, please understand. I couldn’t do anything.
THEY were so many, and I was so scared. THEY looked so ugly, and the machines they
had were almost like magic. And Mama, I was so young! I wasn’t even ten!”
The woman on the other side of the screen scoffed. “You think that’s an excuse? Do
you have any idea how many sleepless nights I lay awake waiting for your sister to come
home? Do you have any idea how disappointed your father was in you? He took it to the
grave, Fox!”
Fox shook his head, and a tear that had threatened to break out finally did, falling
down his cheek. “Mama, why are you saying these things?” he asked in almost an
inaudible whisper.
“Because it’s the truth! That’s what you want, isn’t it? The truth? Well here it comes at
you, sonny boy! You are responsible for your father’s death! You are a failure! You failed
me! You failed your sister! You failed your partner, and you failed your beloved X-files!”
She sat back in her chair, exhausted at the venting of her rage. “I wish THEY would have
taken you instead of your sister. I wish you were never born.”
Her image suddenly blinked off, and all that was left was the cartoonish blue and
white menu display of AOL. Fox stared numbly at the screen, the tears now flowing
freely down his cheeks. The Dukes huddled behind him, too stunned to move and not
sure what to say.
It was Bo who acted first. The young blond slowly stepped toward his friend, and
gently laid his hand on the agent’s shoulder. Fox flinched at the touch, his trance suddenly
broken by the human contact. When he realized that it was his young friend standing
behind him, he could no longer hold his tears back, and he found himself honestly crying.
“Mulder?!” Everyone turned around and saw Scully standing with an address book in
one hand, a cell phone in the other, and a bewildered look on her face. The fear in her
voice was profound. In all the years that they have been together, Dana Scully had never
once seen Fox Mulder cry… until now. “Mulder, what’s wrong?”
Fox quickly wiped his face. He suddenly realized that there was a large crowd staring
at him, and he fought hard to regain control of himself. Luke saw how shaken he was,
and he quickly moved to regain control of the situation. “Um… Dana… uh, everything’s
okay. Fox just had an argument with his mom.”
“WHAT!” The red headed doctor walked meekly up to Luke and handed him the
phone. “Mulder’s mother has been on the phone with me for the past fifteen minutes! I
couldn’t find the Gunmen’s address, so I called Mrs. Mulder.”
Luke reached out and gently picked the cell phone from Dana’s trembling hand. “Is
she on the phone now?”
Dana nodded. Fox quickly jumped out of his seat, and rushed for the cordless Nokia.
He ripped it out of Luke’s hand and brought it to his ear. “Mom? Mom, is that you?”
Daisy jogged to Bo’s side and gripped his arm tight. Her hands were both sweaty and
cold. Jesse pulled out a chair and in confusion sat down. Luke and Scully watched,
stunned out of their mind at what they were seeing.
“Mom? Were… were you on the computer just now..?” The was a second of silence,
and at the response Mulder’s hue turned ashen gray. “You weren’t? You haven’t touched
the computer all day?” He swallowed hard and trembled “…Mom, I can’t talk to you right
now. I have to call you later.”
The lawman pulled the phone off his ear and quickly hit the off button. He threw the
machine back at Scully, anxious to get away from it.
“Mr. Duke,” Mulder finally said with a determined but shaky voice. “There is a ghost
on this farm!”
Every jaw in the kitchen dropped. “What?” Jesse replied.
“There is a ghost on this farm, and it is picking our brains and playing games with us!”
Daisy gripped Bo’s arm harder. The statement terrified her out of her mind, and she
was on the verge of tears. Bo put his arm around her shoulders, and was about to say
something to calm her down… when a streak of blonde hair brushed past the window. Bo
froze. He didn’t say anything to anyone in the room about what he saw. He was afraid
he’d turn his family’s fear into a frenzy. He knew what was outside lurking in the
shadows. A little girl with sad eyes and a dirty shirt was watching them. Somehow, she
was responsible for this chaos. Somehow, she was digging into his and Fox Mulder’s
heads and making both men’s deepest, darkest nightmares come true. And for the life of
him, he could not understand why.