Other Tales and Emephera

Dana Scully opened the door to her partner's office. "Muldar, I just came... what are you doing?"

Fox Muldar, known by his less familiar associates as "Spooky" for his prediliction for strange and unexplained phenomena, looked up from his seat on the floor, where he sat with a portable computer on his lap and a scattering of manilla folders around him. "Hiya, Scully. I decided I liked that toy you carry around and decided to index some of the more interesting X-files by keywords and the like. That way if, say, I want to know all of the satanic coven reports in Virginia, I can just call up a list of all the X-files with those keywords." He grinned.

"So, these are the ones you consider... interesting?" Scully asked. She sat down and examined them. Most were closed and all she could read was the case number, closure data, and the (X) stamp on each one.

"Yeah. Take a look at this one, Scully. It's a very exclusive school in Salem, New York. Private school, less than twenty students. The investigating agents were looking for an arsonist. When they investigated the students' backgrounds, every one had been a misfit in their original school and almost all of them were accused by their peers of being psychic." Muldar grinned. "Take a look at the last interview on the list."

Scully ran her hand down the page. "Senator Kelly of Virginia?"

"One and the same. Now look at the agent in charge."

"Henry Peter Gyrich. Didn't he disappear a couple years ago?"

Muldar nodded, his mouth full of sunflower seeds. Scully noticed that they were pre-shelled. "I thought you liked this in the shell?"

"It's all they had down in the commisary," Muldar said. "Gyrich disappeared over Montana in 1988. His private plane supposedly went down but nobody ever found the wreck. Get this, Scully... guess what he was carrying in his briefcase?"

Scully had grown smart to this game a long time ago. "What?"

Muldar leaned over and whispered, "An X-file."

"An X-file? Which one?"

Muldar shrugged. "Nobody knows. All I have is the case number but nobody can tell me what it was about."

Scully closed the file. "What else do you have here?"

"Here's one I enjoy. This guy at the Federal maximum security prison in Bangor, Maine. He's there for impersonating federal officials, including military personnel."

"So why is he interesting?"

Muldar smiled. "He's escaped five times. Nobody knows how, either. He just seems to walk through the walls. His last arrest was November 18th, 1989. Guess where he was?" Scully was silent this time. "Crystal Palace."

"The nuclear bunker in the Rockies?"

Muldar nodded again. "He was trying to get into the computers and start World War Three. Apparently in real life he owns several major companies. And a healthy chunk of Eurisko."

Scully recognized the name of the company with the computer that had nearly killed her earlier in the year. "What else?"

"Well, this one is of a vampire in Toronto. There were a couple of odd exsanguination incidents there last year. The finger was pointed at a cop, but it turned out he just had something called, here it is, hyperphotic response syndrome. Couldn't go out in the sun. You know how some people sneeze when exposed to bright light?" Scully nodded. "The muscles in your eyes are tickling your sinuses. In his case, they felt like they were crushing his sinuses. Case closed."

Muldar's hands glided over the case files. "A lot of vampires, Scully. Florida, Los Angeles. This one claims that that rock star, Lestat, really was a vampire."

"What's that big stack behind you?"

"What, that?" Muldar laughed, and Scully thought it sounded almost derisive. "That's the X-file for some kooky radio talk-show minister out of Denver. He sends us a fax almost every day claiming to have uncovered some new evidence of the International Satanic Conspiracy." Muldar deepened his voice in sarcasm. "I figure there might be a bit of truth in there somewhere, so I keep them."

Muldar opened another. "Here are the investigation reports on Gold and Appel importers. I've got them because there's a claim that G-and-A does so well because of supernatural influence. It also has a claim that the Pentagon is in that shape to imprison some sort of monster." He paused, then found another file. "This one is about an investigation into some kind of quasi-religious group. It was a computer hacking case, but what's interesting is that group was supposedly created to track people who were immortal. Apparently there's some mention of those beheading and explosion cases in New York and New Jersey back around 1984."

"I don't remember those," Scully said. "Muldar, this is all fascinating, but we've got a case to work on. An unexplained death that the locals are calling us in on." She handed him the file. "Retired newspaper man, but he was found dead from cell rupture. There's no salt left in his body."

Muldar accepted the file and examined it. He read it carefully and a small smile spread across his face. He keyed something into his new computer and smiled even wider. Reaching behind him, he picked up one of the many X-files organized in a circle around his floor. "Here it is."

"Here what is?" Scully asked.

"Your newspaper man. He's in an X-file from 1976. Agents were investigating mysterious deaths at a hospital in LA. Seems it was built on an ancient Indian burial ground and this guy was claiming that the evil spirits were responsible." Muldar stood up and closed the lid on his computer. Grabbing his jacket, he said, "Come on, Scully. We've got an X-file to look in to."