St. Peter's Catholic Church
Bethlehem, Ohio
8:23 pm, Thursday, April 23

"NO!"

Scully saw Mulder leap across empty space, clawing at the ladder, but Chancey was up and gone, slamming the trapdoor in his face. Mulder banged his shoulder against it once, twice. It did not even rattle.

She scrambled to Nathan's side, her doctor's fingers reaching through the darkness, encountering slickness. "Mulder," she cried. "I need your help!"

She knelt beside the boy, pushed his hair back from his ear, squinted in the faint light from the dirty window. The blood spread in an inky pool beneath Nathan's head, blackness on the dark floor. She could hardly make out its borders in the murky light.

"Come here," she grabbed Mulder's wrist and pulled him down next to her. "Hold him up. I have to see." She lifted Nathan by the shoulders, thrusting him into Mulder's arms so that the wound on his neck faced the window. She squinted into the shadows, fighting to see something, anything, that would give her hope for Nathan's survival. She wanted to hope. Chancey had moved so quickly, the cut could be superficial, it could only seem bad because of the poor conditions, her inability to examine the injury. She ignored the warm wetness seeping into the knees of her pants, the stickiness that coated her hands.

"Dammit!" she whispered. She couldn't see the depth and extent of the wound, not really, but she was pretty sure that Chancey had sliced right through the carotid artery: Nathan's blood was being pumped right out of his body. It ran in thin streams down his shoulder, over and through his t-shirt. He would live for maybe a minute or less. She could not help him.

Her chin trembled as she met Mulder's eyes over the pale shadow of Nathan's tangled blond hair. She shook her head, and even through the darkness she saw the pain bloom fresh on his face. His arms tightened around the boy. Was this the price then, for saving Kevin? Was there always a sacrifice? Last time it had been Owen, and Kevin's own mother, this time was it Nathan Cornell. Who would she watch die the next time Kevin's life needed saving?

"Nathan?"

Kevin's voice rasped from near her left hand. He had crawled over, voice rough from disuse, shaky with emotion.

"Is he going to be okay, Miss Scully?"

She pulled her fingers away from Nathan's throat. He wasn't dead, not yet but any second. He had called her Dana. And his blood was on her hands.

"No, Kevin." Her voice cracked. "He won't be."

Kevin paused beside her for a moment, head bowed, completely still.

"Help," he said, and she dragged him up into her lap so that he could remain upright. He swayed even in her arms.

"Nathan," he said. "Nathan."

His fingers roamed over his brother's arm, his shoulder, his bloody throat.

"Oh, Nathan," Kevin Cryder said, and in the dim light she saw the shimmer, the glistening in the palms of his hands that told her Kevin's own blood had begun to flow once more.

*****

Mulder sat in the dark, on a cold and dirty floor with a dying boy in his arms, and the tackiness of cooling blood on his fingers. His shoulder ached from slamming it into the trapdoor, and Nathan's weight was cutting off the circulation in his leg. He felt everything, from the pins and needles tingling in his toes, to the crick in his neck from the awkward position, but most of all he felt the aching emptiness in the middle of his chest, just under the place where Nathan Cornell's cheek pressed, chilly with death. Empty.

This was it, this was where belief got you--a locked room in a false church with an innocent kid who got killed by a psychopath just because he was there.

This was faith.

He heard Kevin's voice, felt his fingers dance over his own arm before finding that of his brother. Scully should stop him, Mulder thought, when Kevin's fingers moved higher, onto the throat. She didn't though, and Mulder didn't say anything, just kept his eyes on her shadowy form.

After a moment, he realized that he could see her eyes, glowing blue and shimmering with tears, and her face, and the glimmer of the cross on her neck. And he could see Nathan's blond hair, sticky with gore. And Kevin's bruised and dirty face, his eyes closed, and the ceiling of the room and the far corners, bathed in an eerie blue and steady light that seemed to emanate from everywhere and nowhere.

Nathan's body jerked in his arms.

Kevin leaned forward, closing his hands around his brother's throat, his lips moving. It looked as if he were strangling Nathan, wringing his neck, except Kevin was crying a little, and rocking back and forth in Scully's grasp.

"Scully," Mulder said. She shook her head, eyes wide, lips parted.

She placed her hands on Kevin's thin forearms.

"Kevin," she said. "You can't--"

"Guh!" Nathan cried, sitting abruptly forward, breath coming in little pants.

Mulder jerked away. Impossible! his mind cried. Nathan was . . . impossible.

Nathan turned, eyes rolling, throat and shirt streaked with gore. "Kevin," he gasped, and fainted.

Despite the fact that Mulder was shaking, he caught the boy.

*****end 11/12*****

Conclusion 12/12
Return to main page