X Files - Whirlwind Part 5

At her direction, he checked the photograph on the right.

"Now that one," she explained, "was found, they think, only a few hours after it happened. The eyes are gone there as well, but I can't tell if they've been surgically removed or ..."

She didn't finish; she didn't have to.

"The blood thing again," he said, looking from one exhibit to the other.

in i -Mm "Right. And again, I don't have an answer for you. Not based on what we have now. Look dose at the hind quaters, though. Twisted, just like the other one. I doubt if they're still in their sockets. There was a lot of force exerted there, Mulder. A lot"

"Meaning?"

"Too soon, Mulder, you know that. Most of the hide is gone, although-" She leaned over and pointed. "-it looks as if there are still some strips around the belly. Maybe between the legs, too. With all that muscle tissue gone or shredded, it's hard to tell."

He looked up. "This isn't just skinning. What do you figure? Flayed?"

She nodded cautiously, unwilling as always to commit until she had seen the evidence firsthand. "I think so. I won't know until I've had a good look for myself."

Then she handed him another pair.

Puzzled, he took them, looked down, and rocked back in the chair, swallowing heavily. "Jesus."

People; they were people.

He closed his eyes briefly and set the pictures aside. He had seen any number of horrors over the past several years, from dismemberment to outright butchery, but there had been nothing as vicious as this. He didn't need to look at them more than once to know this was something dif-ferent. To put it mildly.

Rayed.

These people had been flayed, and he didn't need to ask if they had been alive when it happened.

"Skinner, right?" The a.s.sistant Director would have flagged this for him as soon as it had arrived, Scully nodded as she pushed absently at her hair, trying to tuck it behind one ear. 'The local authorities, the county sheriff's office, called . . ." She checked a page of the file. "They called Red Garson in the Albuquerque office. Apparently it didn't take him very long to think of you."

Mulder knew Garson slightly, a weathered, rangy westerner who had breezed through the Bureau academy at Quantico, less with consider-able skill-although he had it in abundance-than with an almost frantic enthusiasm born of a man determined to get out of the East as fast as he could. Which he had done as soon as he could. He was no slouch when it came to on-site investiga-tions, so this must have thrown him completely. It wasn't like Mm to ask for anyone's help, "Mulder, whoever did this is truly sick."

Sick, deranged, or so devoid of emotion that he might as well not be human.

He grabbed a picture at random-it was a cou-ple, and he was thankful that what was left of their faces was turned away from the camera.

'Tied? Drugged?"

Scully cleared her throat. "It's hard to tell but initial indications are . . ." She paused, and he heard the nervousness, and the anger, in her voice.

"Indications are they weren't. And Garson doesn't think they were killed somewhere else and dumped at the site."

He rubbed a hand over his mouth, bit down on his lower lip thoughtfully.

"Autopsies by the medical examiner, a woman named Helen Rios, are inconclusive on whether they were actually conscious or not at the time of death. The lack of substantial quanti-ties of epinephrine seems to indicate it hap-pened too fast for the chemical to form, which it usually does in abundance in cases of extreme violence."

"A victim's adrenaline rush," he said quietly.Scully looked up from the report. "Right. Something else, too."

He didn't know what question to ask.

"They appear to have been dressed at the time of the a.s.sault."

He s.h.i.+fted uneasily "Wait."

"Shards of clothing were found around each of the scenes. Not even that-no more than bits. Strips of leather from boots or shoes. Metal b.u.t.tons."

"Scully, hold it."

Her hand trembling slightly, she dropped the folder back into her briefcase. "The pathologist says they either died of shock or bled to death." She inhaled slowly. "Garson, in a sidebar, seems to think they were frightened to death, that they were dead before they hit the ground."

Mulder waved her silent. "Scully, these people- forget about the animals for a minute-these peo-ple were attacked by someone, or a group of someones, flayed until their clothes were shredded and their skin was taken off." He gestured vaguely. Shook his head. "You're saying-"

"They're saying," she corrected.

"Okay. Okay, they're saying it happened so fast, epinephrine hadn't had time to . . ." He smiled without humor and looked blindly around the room. "Scully, you know as well as I do that's d.a.m.n near impossible."

"Probably," she admitted. "I haven't had a lot of time to think about it."

He stood abruptly. "You don't have to think about it, Scully. There's nothing to think about. It's practically flat-out impossible."

"Which is why we have to be at Dulles first thing in the morning. Stopover at Dallas, we'll be in New Mexico by one their time." She raised a finger to forestall a response. "And remember: practically is the right word here, Mulder. That does not mean definitely"

He stared at her briefcase, spread his arms at all the work yet undone he could see in the office, and said, "What?" at the twitch of a smile on her lips.

She didn't have to answer.

He usually reacted this way when a clear X-File landed in his lap. A switching of gears, of mind-set, excitement of one kind changing to excite-ment of another. Impossible, to him, meant someone else had decided there were no explana-tions for whatever had happened.

But there were always explanations.

Always.

His superiors, and Scully, didn't always like them, but they were there.

Sometimes all it took was a little imagination to find them. A less hidebound way of looking at the world. A willingness to understand that the truth sometimes wore a mask.

"There's something else," she added as he reached for the sunflower seeds and his briefcase.

"What?"

She stood and brushed at her skirt. "There was a witness to one of the killings."

He felt his mouth open. "You're kidding. He saw who did it?"

"She," Scully corrected. "And she claims it wasn't a person."

He waited.

"She said it was a shadow."

Brother, he thought.

"Either that, or a ghost."A low fire burned in a shallow pit.

Smoke rose in dark trails, winding fire-reflected patterns around the large underground room before escaping through the ragged round hole in the ceiling.

Shadows on the roughly hewn rock walls cast by shadows seated on planks around the pit.

Six men, cross-legged and naked, their bodies lean and rawhide-taut, stringlike hair caught in the sweat that glittered in the firelight, their hands on their knees. Their eyes on the flames that swayed to a breeze not one of them could feel.

Over the fire, resting on a metal grate, a small, flame-blackened pot in which a colorless liquid bubbled without raising steam.

A seventh man sat on a chair carved from dull red stone, back in the shadows where the rite said he belonged. He wore no clothing save a cloth headband embedded with polished stones and gems, none of them alike, none bigger than the tip of a finger. In his right hand he held the spine of a snake; from his left hand dangled the tail of a black horse, knotted at the end and wound through with blue, red, and yellow ribbons. His black eyes were unfocused.

Eventually one of the six stirred, chest rising and falling in a long, silent sigh. He took a clay ladle from the hand of the man on his left, dipped it into the pot, and stood as best he could on scrawny legs that barely held him. A word spoken to the fire. A word spoken to the smoke-touched night sky visi-ble through the hole. Then he carried the ladle to the man in the chair, muttered a few words, and poured the boiling liquid over the seventh man's head.

The man didn't move.

The water burned through his hair, over his shoulders, down his back and chest.

He still didn't move.

The horsetail twitched, but the hand that held it didn't move.

The old man returned to the circle, sat, and after s.h.i.+fting once, didn't move.

The only sound was the fire.

A lone man waiting in the middle of nowhere.

He stood in the center of a scattering of bones-coyote, mountain lion, horse, bull, ram, snake.

And from where he stood, he could see smoke rising above Sangre Viento Mesa, rising in sepa-rate trails until, a hundred feet above, it gathered itself into a single dark column that seemed to make its way to the moon.

In the center of the smoke-made basket the moonlight glowed emerald.

The man smiled, but there was no humor.

He spread his arms as if to entice the smoke toward him.

It didn't move.

He was patient.

It had moved before; it would move again.

And after tonight, when the old fools had fin-ished, he would make it move on his own.

All he had to do was believe.Donna rolled over in her sleep, moaning so loudly it woke her up. She blinked rapidly to dis-pel the nightmare, and when she was sure it was done, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat up, pus.h.i.+ng hair away from her eyes, mouth open to catch the cool air that puckered her skin and made her s.h.i.+ver.

The house was quiet.

The neighborhood, such as it was, was quiet.

Moonlight slipped between the cracks the cur-tains left over the room's two windows, slants of it that trapped sparkling particles of dust.

She yawned and stood, yawned again as she scratched at her side and under her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The nightmare was gone, scattered, but she knew she had had one, knew it was probably the same one she had had over the past two weeks: She walked in the desert, wearing only a long T-s.h.i.+rt, bare feet feeling the night cold of the desert floor. A steady wind blew into her face. A full moon so large it seemed about to collide with the Earth, and too many stars to count.

Despite the wind's direction, she could hear something moving close behind her, but when-ever she looked back, the night was empty except for her shadow.

It hissed at her.

It sc.r.a.ped toward her.

When she couldn't take it any longer, she woke up, knowing that if she didn't, she was going to die.

She didn't believe in omens, but she couldn't help but wonder.

Now she padded sleepily into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and wondered if it was too late, or too early, to have a beer. Not that it mattered. If she had one now, she'd be in the bathroom before dawn, cursing herself and won-dering how she'd make it through the day with so little sleep.

She let the door swing shut with a righteous nod, yawned, and moved to the back door.

Her yard was small, ending, like all the other yards scattered along the side road, in a stone-block wall painted the color of the earth. Poplars along the back blocked her view of the other houses even though they were too far away to see even in daylight, unless she was right at the wall.

Suddenly she felt much too alone.

There was no one out there.

She was cut off, and helpless.

The panic rose, and she was helpless to stop it. Running from the room did her no good because she could see nothing from the living room win-dow either-the rosebushes she had spent so much time training to be a hedge fragmented her view of the road, erasing sight of the field across the way.

Trapped; she was trapped, A small cry followed her to the door. She flung it open and ran onto the stoop, stopping before she flung herself off the steps. Cold concrete made her gasp; cold wind plastered the T-s.h.i.+rt to her chest and stomach.

I am, she decided, moving back into town first thing in the morning.

It was the same vow she made after every nightmare, and it made her smile.

Oh boy, tough broad, she thought sarcastically; think you're so tough, and a lousy dream makes you a puddle.

She stepped back over the threshold, laughing aloud, but not loud enough that she didn't hear the hissing.

The smoke rose and coiled and swallowed the emerald light.

Mike Ostrand was a little drunk.h.e.l.l, he was a lot drunk, and could barely see the dashboard, much less the interstate. The gray slash of his headlamps blurred and sharpened, making the road swing from side to side as if the car couldn't stay in its proper lane.

This late, though, he didn't much give a d.a.m.n.