Deliver Us From Evil by S. Esty AKA Windsinger Synopsis: A little vignette which follows the Calusari. On their drive home from the hospital after the exorcism, Mulder and Scully decide to stop by a peaceful place for the night. Author's note: The idea for this actually came out of a review of The Calusari which I wrote for the X Files/ TVGossip section on AOL. Had to get it down. Just got too overwhelmed by the implications of this episode. Shiver.... *** This story is based on the characters created by Chris Carter, Ten Thirteen Productions and Fox Broadcasting. Used without permission and no infringement is intended. Thanks guys (unisex personal pronoun intended), for creating this marvelous stuff. Copyright 1995 by S. Esty "But you must be careful, it knows you." - elder Calusari to Mulder, *The Calusari*, X-Files, April 14, 1995 (Good Friday) "...for neither innocence, nor vigilance can be protection against the howling heart of evil." - Mulder's report, *The Calusari*... 'Deliver Us From Evil' - From the end of the Christian prayer *The Our Father*: '...And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, now, and at the hour of our death...' Deliver Us From Evil by S. Esty The car moved quietly through the silent predawn streets, heading home. Neither occupant spoke. Dana had offered to drive and Mulder had acquiesced with a strange lassitude. He had been quiet, so strangely quiet, since - when? Then Dana remembered. Since she had looked up from the body of the old woman whose eyes had been savagely pecked out to see him standing almost entranced against the wall of that hellish bedroom and staring into the face of that strange little boy. What had he seen in that tortured boy's eyes? Himself as a child? Is that what had drawn him in. Some kinship? He had not spoken to her about what he felt and she had learned not to ask. He had seen more since. So had she. Dana shivered. She had offered to drive because she needed to do something normal. Something to connect her to the earth. She had seen horrors these last few days she could not rationalize. Just in the last few hours she had seen a woman pinned unbelievably near the ceiling of a room by some unseen force, her own child's voice coming from her body. Dana had seen and heard it; wished to God she hadn't. Her own body still ached where she had been thrown through the air to impact with astonishing force against the wall. She could not rid her mind of the memory of the eyes on that 'child' as he had raised the ceremonial dagger above her. He would have killed her. She found out later it was at that moment that the strange ceremony the Rumanian elders, the Calusari, had held in the hospital had reached its culmination. But at what cost? Mulder had been there. He shouldn't have been. He was too vulnerable. Too open to those damned extreme possibilities. For if she had been through hell, Mulder was still in it. A quiet smoldering hell that was strangely immobilizing him. She still couldn't understand it. She knew now why he had had to summon the Calusari to exorcise the child but why, after they arrived, had he not come to her aid. He had sent her alone to face what he knew with all his heart was an murderous, unnatural evil. At least he had called when the ritual was concluded, but by then the danger was past and she and the child's mother were already on their way back to the hospital. Dana had hated Mulder's protective attitude towards her in the past but this nearly flagrant unconcern was out of character and frightened her. She looked over at him as she drove. His eyes were staring unseeing out the window. Dana thought back to the far younger man she had met in the cluttered basement office for the first time less than two years before. She remembered how casual and flippant he had been. How he had driven for hours strewing sunflower husks and his pointed banter all over the car. How he had danced in the rain just because his stop watches hadn't matched. How he had taken her into his room to sooth her fears about the marks on her back and how he had bared his soul to her. Though they had moved beyond those days at least she thought they had moved together. She wished he would talk to her. "Have you ever read the *Wizard of Earthsea*," Mulder asked out of the silence so suddenly she jumped. "I've heard of it. Ursula LeGuin's the author isn't she? It's a young people's classic." "It's not for children, Scully," came his liquid deep voice in the dark. "In his arrogance a young adept conjures up his own personal devil. A small black creation of 'unlife' which only he can see, which nearly kills him, scars his face and knows his true name. It's an evil that wants to eat his soul. Scared me to death the first time I read it." Pause. When he continued his voice was tight. "I feel like I've walked into that book." <"You must be careful. It knows you."> "Remind me not to read it," Scully muttered. After a few minutes she asked tentatively. "Did everything turn out alright? I mean in the book." "The young sorcerer escaped with his soul," Mulder said in a sepulcher voice, "but not unchanged." Pause. The car stopped at a red light. No other cars were on the road. When it started up again he asked, "Do you believe what happened to you, Scully?" Dana had, of course, told him what had happened in that room, but not of her fear. "It happened." "But you don't believe?" "I don't want to believe." After a few minutes, Dana slowed the car and parked. Mulder came back from wherever his mind had taken him and peered out of the window. "Where are we?" "St.Mark's." Scully said opening the door. "You can take the car home. I'll call a cab later." As she slid out of the car, Dana was surprised Mulder did not move over to the driver's side but joined her on the sidewalk wrapping his long trench coat around his slim body. "Are you coming?" she asked surprised. She had sought comfort here before after some of their more horrific cases, but he had always declined to join her, deciding to deal with his horrors in his own way. "I thought I would, if that's okay with you?" "Fine with me, Mulder," Dana said gently. He looked up at the heaven-reaching spires of stone. "Hey, do these places stay open all night?" he asked with a lame attempt at levity. "That's when the bogeyman comes, Mulder." As they started up the walk toward the great stone church, Mulder sought for her hand and she felt him take it firmly in his like a frightened child seeking protection from the dark so at odds with the mood he had sought to set earlier. Where was the tousle- haired, impish boy-man Dana had finally realized she had fallen in love with? Dana looked up into his eyes and saw them shining in the light of the street lamp. Where there had been sadness before and pain, now his eyes were haunted as well. Dana trembled. Perhaps it was precognition, but she knew at that moment as certain as breath that some day, soon or late, she would look up into his beautiful sad face and something that was not Mulder would be looking at her from behind those eyes. In the morning, parishioners coming into the church for the early Holy Saturday vigil found them sitting in a pew in the back of the church, asleep. A tall, young man, his face lined with care and weariness, slept with his chin on the head of a red haired woman. Nestled with her head against the shoulder of the man, the woman's face was at rest, beautiful in its peacefulness. Her hand rested protectively on an object she wore on a chain around her neck. No one disturbed them. The End (until Chris Carter and Co do the sequel) *** In case you are interested, here are my stories so far either finished or in progress. Feedback is always appreciated. Series A 1. THE BOX (on ftp.cs.nmt.edu) 2. THE VACATION (which I haven't even drafted yet: name may have to change since there's another vacation serial that has just come around on a.t.x.c.) 3. THE ABDUCTEE (won't be out before the end of April at the rate I'm going. About 240K) 4. MEMORIES (Will be out any day. Waiting for it to come out on EMXC first.) 5. JUST THE TWO OF US (Out in Mid May.) These stories in the series can all be read independently. (Hey, I didn't say I had to deliver them in order. The writing muse is definitely 'She who must be obeyed.') Also: DO NOT GO GENTLE (on ftp.cs.nmt.edu) - Colony/End Game Filler DELIVER US FROM EVIL (posted 4/15/95) - Calusari follow up WALKERS (working title: there's already a fan fiction called 'Walker'.) Coming late this spring or early summer. Really long! -------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------- "Goodbye," said the fox, "And now here is my secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; What is essential is invisible to the eye." A. de Saint-Exupery