Chapter Text
27 East Side Rd
Hancock, Maine
March 18, 1999
11:28 PM
“Alright, that was Depeche Mode, ‘Dangerous’, off their 1990 album Violator. Kudos to Allison in Trenton for the request,” Maisie Kaufman said into the mic. “Ok, next call-in is from Luke from Ellsworth. Luke, you’re on 95.7 FM, welcome to the show.”
“Yeah, I’ve got a request for you,” a voice crackled through the line. A familiar voice, to Maisie’s ears. So familiar, in fact, that it made the hair on the nape of her neck stand on end. It couldn’t be…but at the same time, that voice immediately brought her back to the time before…
Nevertheless, she continued, clearing her throat. “Let’s hear it, then.”
“I wanna hear an old song. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, it’s one that you used to love, Maisie. Or should I say—Margaret?”
She gasped. “W-what song is it?”
“It’s the one you used to listen to every night when you were on the phone with your junior year boyfriend. Blake, wasn’t that his name? You never learnt the words. But I did, Margaret. Every time I hear it, I think of you. So I hope that as you hear it now, you think of me.”
The line suddenly went dead. Maisie gasped. Oh my god, it was him! It had to be! She let the silence fill the studio for a few more moments while she regained her composure. She knew that if she looked up from her station in the broadcast booth, the producers would be waving at her wildly through the window.
After a few moments, she mustered the courage to speak. “Okay…this is ‘Blue Monday’ from New Order’s 1983 Power, Corruption & Lies.” Hands shaking, she slipped the tape in and pressed play. As the song began to play, she put her head in her hands and sobbed.
On the other side of that phone line had been her brother. Her brother had been dead for four years.
US Rte 1
Just outside of Ellsworth, Maine
March 29, 1999
2:14 PM
Mulder turned off the radio and sighed, turning his attention back to the road in front of him. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but asphalt and a dark green tunnel of coniferous trees flanking the road on either side of the window.
“Remind me again, Mulder,” Scully began from the passenger seat, “Why is this of any interest to us?” She flipped through the file in her lap again, which contained the crime scene photos and initial autopsy reports—nothing out of the ordinary there, just a drowned man found with a high concentration of alcohol and recreational drugs in his system.
Mulder drummed his thumbs on the leather of the steering wheel. “Alfred Kaufman had been missing, presumed dead on a lost ship for four years before the body turned up. They discovered it only three hours after his sister, Maisie Kaufman, made a 911 call reporting someone bearing her brother’s voice and information only they would know calling into her local radio show. When they got a positive ID on the body, the coroner’s office concluded that he couldn’t have been dead for more than six days-”
“-And the assumption is that he must’ve been dead much longer than that, given the circumstances of his disappearance,” Scully finished.
He nodded. “The local police told me over the phone about several reports by local residents in which they describe hearing the voice of a deceased loved one through radio static and CRT TV sets manufactured before 1993, and one man even reported hearing the voice of his mother in the dial tone of his cell phone. All of the reports have occurred in the last 3 months. It seems that, possibly, there’s a link between the reports and the discovery of several other bodies. Helen Marshalls’ case just last month is a testament to that.” Mulder pointed towards his briefcase at Scully’s feet. “The file’s in there.”
“Mulder, you can’t just jump-” Scully started, but her reprimand was quickly cut off by the sound of a sharp cry from the backseat.
The two of them swiveled their heads around to look at their nine-month-old son in his carseat. His little red cheeks were quickly being covered by tears, and he wriggled against the straps of his seatbelt, reaching an arm out towards his parents.
“Should I pull over?” he asked.
Scully nodded. “I haven’t fed him since we stopped for lunch.” Mulder acquiesced, pulling into the driveway of a lumber yard and bringing the car to a stop. Scully unbuckled her seat belt, then hopped out, opened the back door, and leaned down to nuzzle her son’s soft cheek. “Hello, my sweet boy. Are we hungry, Will?”
William just kept crying, reaching his short arms up to Scully, demanding to be picked up. She heeded, and in a practised motion, Mulder retrieved the diaper bag from the trunk and handed it to her while she unbuttoned her suit jacket and blouse to expose her breast.
He latched on almost instantly, sucking hungrily while Mulder placed a burp cloth over his shoulder and leaned up against the car to watch his little family fondly, the matching fiery red hair of his wife and child shining in the midday sun that beat down on them from where Scully sat, legs dangling out the car door. He wouldn’t mention that the added bonus of such an arrangement was to allow Scully the space to continue berating him.
Continue she did— “Mulder, two cases isn’t enough to make an absolute connection between those two factors. Are you telling me we drove all the way up here, on a weekend where I couldn’t get my mom to watch William, because of a single possible connection between two cases in one town?”
He bit his lip.
“Mulder!” Her voice went shrill, as it often did when she was angry, but she took a breath and tried to ground herself when William stirred in her lap. She spoke again, almost a whisper this time, as she caressed their son’s fine hairs and readjusted his latch. “Things are…different now. With William, I mean. We both know that neither of us can go rushing off on leads anymore whenever it suits us.”
He nodded, swallowing. “I know,” he said, squatting down so that he sat somewhat level with her seat in the car. “But I promise that there’s more to it.” She looked at him, probing him to go on. “The wreck of a vessel that’s been identified as a 86% match to the ship that Kaufman was on was identified off the coast of Portland a few weeks ago. There’s legitimate evidence confirming that the deceased reported to be speaking to their loved ones are, in fact, alive, meaning that there’s been a major data breach in this area involving governing records issued by the state, or a major source of electromagnetic disturbance in the region, likely as a part of a resolved effort by an extragovernmental organisation.”
“Is that what you think is actually happening?”
“No.”
“What’s your spin on it, then?” she asked. Mulder shared a glance with her. “Humor me, Mulder.”
He pushed himself up by his knees, moving to lean on the open car door. “The case of Alfred Kaufman and others in the area have all the trappings of historical cases of the Electronic Voice Phenomenon. That is, unexplained voices heard over analogue audio recordings, often attributed to the dead or missing. If Hancock lies in an ELF region-”
“A what?”
“An Extremely Low Frequency region. ELF waves are used in submarines and geological surveys for their ability to travel through seawater. These things can circumnavigate the globe three times over before they lose any significant amplitude. If Hancock lies at a frequent convergence point for ELF waves from opposite sides of the globe, it could lend some credence to the propagation of extra electromagnetic energy being converted into audible sound.”
“Extro electromagnetic energy meaning…ghosts, Mulder?” As William unlatched from her breast, she sat him up in her lap. “Daddy’s sounding silly, Will.”
He reached his arms out for William. “Here, I’ll burp him.” Scully kissed his little downy head, then passed him over, and Mulder slung him over the shoulder with the cloth, beginning to pat his back and pacing, bouncing slightly. “All I’m saying, Scully, is that it’s not out of the question.”
“This place is certainly off the beaten path. There’s been well documented cases of mass hysteria in towns such as these. Or perhaps, Maisie had known about the body before the police, and planned a stunt before Alfred was found in order to draw in a few extra listeners,” she offered.
“Maybe. But something’s not right here. It creeps me out,” he said.
William made a few grunts, then burped, before nuzzling into his father’s neck and giggling. Mulder smiled, and moved the baby so that he was resting on his hip, giving him the length of his necktie to play with. William took it happily, and began chewing on the end of it.
“I still don’t know why Skinner sent us both when you just put the request in for one of us,” Scully said as she rebuttoned her shirt, took the cloth from Mulder, and put the diaper bag back in the trunk. “He knows, to some extent, that things aren’t like how they used to be.”
He nodded. While they knew that their work together on the X Files would be decidedly crippled by going through the usual HR processes of other romantic couples at the FBI, meaning reassignment to different sections and monthly meetings with a Bureau-appointed social worker, their relationship and marriage was something of an open secret at the J Edgar Hoover building. If the matching gold bands worn on their left ring fingers or Scully’s pregnancy weren’t explicitly signals of a relationship with each other, the fact that they both gushed about the same “William” to various colleagues over their lunch breaks and drove home in the same car every night was. Scully had accidentally answered Mulder’s cell in the middle of the night thinking it was her own countless times, only to meet a somewhat flustered Skinner on the other end of the line. In place of an image of his family on his desk, which he’d decided would be inappropriate if they were even attempting to keep up pretenses, Mulder had pinned the sheet torn out of his page-a-day calendar from their wedding date (December 2nd, 1997) onto his office corkboard. They answered every question from Skinner about William with as few words as possible, and kept their hands (mostly) to themselves while at the office.
“Skinner knows. He wouldn’t put us both together on this if he had to without asking, so my guess is the order came from somewhere higher up.”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s punishing us,” she said.
“For what?”
“Oh, going over budget, inconclusive reports, unlikely conclusions.” Scully waved her hand in the air.
“Or maybe the FBI knows something about Hancock, Maine that we don’t,” Mulder suggested.
She rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t stop herself from smiling a little bit at his tone. “Starting out on a positive note, are we, Mulder?”
“Always, Scully. Are we gonna get going?”
“Sure. I’ll drive,” she said. “You buckle him back in.”
“Okay. Hey, buddy, don’t chew too hard.” Mulder took the end of his tie away from William, and calmed the oncoming storm of tears foreshadowed by William’s quivering bottom lip by tickling his little belly, which earned a wave of giggles. He buckled their son back into his carseat, humming a little tune to him the whole time, then came around to the passenger seat and strapped himself in.
He reached for the radio dial, but Scully tsked at him. “You’re forgetting something.”
Mulder met her gaze, the corners of her eyes pinched by a little smirk, and realised instantly. He leaned over to her and pressed his lips to hers, snaking a hand into her hair and pushing a tongue into her mouth. She moaned quietly, diverting the energy into her own tongue, meeting pressure with pressure as she savoured the feeling of him and her together.
When they broke away, Scully kept her eyes closed for a minute and made no apparent effort to hide her grin. “Better?” Mulder asked, and she nodded firmly before taking a breath, looking back to him, then the road, and put the car into drive.
White Birches Motel
Hancock, Maine
March 29, 1999
3:04 PM
“Two rooms? Are you sure?” The woman at the check-in desk asked while she peered up at them over her glasses frames.
Mulder couldn’t blame her—here they stood before her, a baby in Scully’s arms, while he carried her purse along with all of the rest of their bags. And to the FBI, she wasn’t wrong. To pacify HR, they’d been booking two rooms ever since their relationship had begun in earnest three years prior (“That way, we can have sex in both beds without having to clean up,” Mulder had always joked, much to Scully’s annoyance. They did, however, occasionally end up fucking in both beds before she’d gotten pregnant and she’d been mostly confined to the DC office during her second and third trimesters).
“Yes. Two with double beds will do fine,” Scully said.
“Alrighty. Separate charges?”
“No, same card. It’s a company card.” Mulder readjusted the bags so that he could reach into his back pocket for his wallet.
“Oh,” the woman said sharply, putting two and two together. “Well then, swipe when you’re ready.”
After paying, Mulder and Scully immediately headed to the room they’d booked for her—it had a kitchenette and a bit of extra space, where Scully set up William’s portable crib and playmat while Mulder unpacked a few of their things and placed the breast milk Scully had pumped in the car into the mini-fridge.
“So what exactly is our plan?” Scully asked from the floor, where William pulled on her hair as she lay on the mat with him.
“Well, tonight, I was hoping to get up to the county Sheriff’s station before midnight and get the full copy of the initial report plus a chance to look at the autopsy report. We might be able to arrange a time for you to examine Kaufman’s body, as well. And I’ve set up an interview with Maisie at 7 in her home a couple miles south of here.”
“How are we going to split this up? I mean, are you going to go to the Sheriff’s, and I talk to Kaufman?”
“I was actually hoping to do it the other way around. I mean, you’re gonna be the one doing the autopsy and all, and I want to see if Kaufman knows anything about EVP or any electromagnetic disturbances in the area,” Mulder said.
“I don’t think it’ll really count as a fair witness interview if the two of us aren’t present,” Scully said.
“Maybe… no, that would be stupid.”
“What?”
“Well…maybe we could bring him?” he asked. He raised his shoulders and eyebrows hesitantly.
Scully sighed. “I don’t know. That’s probably breaking about fifty FBI conduct rules. And besides, we don’t even know if this woman is dangerous. This whole thing could be the result of some psychogenic event or something broader.”
“I don’t like it either. But we aren’t really going to have much choice, are we?”
She was silent for a little. “If it comes down to it, fine. But only this once. If we somehow find a sitter in this town in the next four hours, we’re jumping on that opportunity.”
He nodded, then strode over to the playmat and swept William up in his arms, earning a scream and a laugh from their son. Mulder growled and pretended to bite his foot off, then softened and held him close. “There’s my Will! You’ve been so good for Mommy and Daddy, my love. Two day road trip like a champ!”
Scully stood and joined in their embrace. Mulder pressed a kiss to the top of her head, and pulled her in with the arm that wasn’t holding William. The baby grabbed on to his father’s chin and started pulling it this way and that, forcing Mulder to turn his head this way and that and open and close his mouth.
Mulder could feel the tightness in Scully’s shoulders. He nestled his head in his neck so that he was close to her ear, and could whisper to her and her only. “It’s going to all be okay. In the future, we’ll make sure we don’t have to bring him into situations like this ever again. But today, he’s going to be just fine.”
He felt her nod against her, and felt her readjust her tight grip on his back. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
And so they stood, three as one, as sunlight streamed into their little motel room.