Chapter 15

Scully walked up the porch, past the wind chimes and old flowers pots, and followed little Greta into the lavish foyer that opened up once again.

Just a little more time, she said to herself. If Jimmy's plan proved true, they would be out of there as soon as Skinner crossed the stop-sign.

Greta's pink silk dress swished ahead as she led Scully down the hall and into the dining room where the small intimate table Scully had seen on her first morning in the house was now replaced by a long, heavy, square desk.

She hesitated, taking in the scene.

Sue stood by the tabletop, sobbing without pause, tears gushing from the real, pretty side of her face. The sunlight through the large windows pressing against the corn edged her short blonde curls. Scully stepped closer.

On the desk, lay a man—sewn back together.

Scully swallowed, tensing, willing her stomach not to lurch.

He was a young man—a very handsome man—though covered in dirt. His features were symmetrical, graceful, and completely un-melted. The damage done to him was indicated by the lines of thick black stitching across his neck, around his arms, and across his thighs; he had been pulled apart and sewn back together. And he breathed… slowly, staring at the ceiling with wide brown eyes that darted frantically back and forth, looking into some distance created by his own tortured mind.

Sue clutched one of his hands to her cheek, and her tears ran along it down his arm, cutting rivets of pale flesh in the coat of dirt.

"See," Greta pointed. "I put Charlie back together, and now they're not talking, or doing anything." She stomped her foot. "I thought they would act out a story, but they're just... sitting there."

"It was a pointless effort, if you ask me," a familiar lisping voice came from the corner. Scully flinched and turned to see Nina's head sitting on a chair in the shadows. "He's out of his mind—look at him. His brain has snapped."

"Shut up, Nina," Greta said, almost out of habit, but stepped closer to study Charlie's face. His eyes darted, the pupils large. It crushed Scully's heart to admit it, but the maid was right: he had clearly endured too much, left buried alive for so long. No psyche was strong enough to withstand such an ordeal.

Sue shook with another sobbing spasm, and clutched his hand harder.

"Miss Dana," Greta turned. "Make them do something else. I want them to play." Her bell voice rang like a whine and an order all at once.

Scully's eyes watered at the tragic scene before her. She looked away from Sue and down at the little girl.

"Greta," she said slowly, squatting in front of the small figure so that their eyes were on the same level. "Greta, these are people. Don't you understand that? These are human beings."

The little girl frowned, scowling. Her small angelic face didn't match the malicious cruelty that she'd unleashed on the world around her—a bizarre sight: a child. Scully looked between her large blue eyes, searching for any spark of empathy.

"Greta, they're not dolls. Don't you understand? Look at them." Greta glanced at the pair by the window. "Can't you see, Greta? Their hearts, their lives—are broken."

"Stop it," the girl yelled, backing away. "Stop saying things!"

In the corner, Nina's head let out an excited giggle.

"That's not fair," Greta screamed at Scully. "You're not being fair! You are awful! I thought you were my friend!"

"Greta—" Scully reached out.

"No, shut up! Don't speak!" The little girl hesitated, panting, her little lips shaking. "I did a good thing—a pretty thing. I put Charlie back together. It took me a long time, and it was so very difficult, and I'm very tired, and all I wanted was to see Miss Susanna and Charlie have a big romantic scene, like in the books."

"Greta, this is real—"

"Shut. Up." The little girl's hands started trembling. A spasm rippled through her, snapping her head back. When she faced Scully again, Greta's eyes washed over with a crimson film.

Nina giggled again—a hysterical sound.

"I did a pretty thing," Greta said, her voice suddenly low, and magnified, "but if you can't see that, maybe I should show you what an ugly thing looks like—show you what heartbreak really looks like."

She raised her hand and snapped her fingers.

Out of nowhere, out of one of the walls it seemed, Mulder tumbled into the room.

"No—" Scully jumped up, and found she couldn't move again.

At the table, Sue froze, too. She had let go of Charlie's hand and moved toward Greta, but now she stood mid-step, her hazel eye wide, blaring a message of warning.

Mulder gaped at them, trying to put together what he was seeing exactly, and then his eyes fell on the girl.

"I'll show you an ugly thing, Miss Dana," Greta moved toward him. "You like your… partner very much, don't you?"

Scully jerked all of her muscles, trying to move, trying to scream at least, but it was no use.

"Do you like his face?" Greta stepped closer. "Get a good last look, then."

Mulder stared at her as she approached him, frowning. It was an odd situation: a tiny seven-year-old threatening a full-grown man.

Out of the folds of her pink dress, Greta drew out the large knife—the same knife as before, only now it glowed like it had been held in a burning furnace.

"Whoa, easy th—" Mulder began, but then his mouth snapped shut, his hands frozen mid-reach.

Greta rose up into the air, and brought the knife closer to Mulder's face.

"You know what's especially heartbreaking?" she said to Scully without turning around. "He's going to feel the pain. He'll feel everything."

Scully hollered, and her voice came out a faint whimper.

Greta brought the knife closer to his cheek, the flat blade glowing. It was a hair away from his skin, when—

Mulder disappeared and reappeared—the image of him. His body flickered like a malfunctioning hologram.

"What?" Greta pulled back.

She whipped about at stared at Scully. Scully's arm, frozen in front of her as she reached toward Mulder, flickered, too: gone and then there again.

"What's happening?" Greta demanded.

"Miss Greta," Nina lisped in the corner. "The dolls—"

The dining room around them flashed—gone and then there, and then—

Gone.

The scream that had been surging through Scully released, and she hollered like a slain animal.

Just ahead of her, Skinner cursed and slammed on the brake.

"What the h—" He whipped around and gaped at her. "Agents! What? How did you—"

Scully turned and saw Mulder right beside her in the car.

"Scu—" he began and gasped, clutching his stomach.

She felt it, too—the surge of hunger and thirst, far worse than the one that had come over her when she'd first left the dead stretch.

"Hospital," she managed to Skinner. "Hospital, now. Dehydrated. Need fluids, electrolytes…"

The sparks across her vision burned up into a blackness that closed in over her. She fainted alongside Mulder, her hand on his.

She woke to the touch of a pillow, and her heart leapt into her throat in pure panic.

"No!" she cried, sitting up, and faltered.

She wasn't in the lavish bedroom; she was in a medical ward, on a hospital bed—a white bed with clean sheets and pillows that smelled of disinfectant. A nurse leaned in around a pulled curtain.

"Ms. Scully? It's ok. You're alright. Everything is just fine."

"Muld—my partner?"

"He's doing just fine." The nurse smiled. "He's stable, and resting. You should be, too."

The nurse walked away. Hospital noise surrounded Scully—medical equipment beeping, and doctors paged over the intercom with brisk urgency.

Scully relented back onto the pillows. She knew she needed to rest—let her body heal from the ordeal it had been put through, but she was terrified to close her eyes.

She was afraid that she would open them in the Dollhouse. She was afraid she'd find their escape had been a pleasant dream, and that their nightmare was just beginning…

The End

Epilogue

It was a week later, back in DC, when Scully walked into their basement office at nine o'clock on a sunny Wednesday morning, that she found Mulder staring at a tabloid scrap, a pensive frown on his face.

The report of their encounter with little Greta had perplexed AD Skinner to the point where the man simply dismissed the case. There was nothing they could do. The trick of the grand house, and the wretched souls it trapped within, was such that it could only be found by someone who was lost. Anyone who drove out to the Dead Road, knowing that it was there, only found a barren stretch of land and an old farmhouse looking like it was due to collapse into a heap any day now. Scully and Mulder's witness account could not be verified by any means the FBI had to offer; it could only remain what it was: another ghost story.

Mulder fixed on the article in his hand, scratching his cheek.

"What is it?" she sighed, pouring herself a cup of coffee. "Bigfoot, again?"

"No," he said. "Spontaneous combustion."

Scully shrugged and settled across the desk from him. "You have a whole file on that—what's so special about this article?"

He looked up and studied her face over the paper. A curious glint caught his eyes when they ran over her lips, and she glanced away, feeling a flush. They'd kept their little moment in the gazebo out of their report, and neither had brought it up in personal conversation either.

"Take a look," Mulder said, and slid the article toward Scully.

It was a cheap tabloid—one of those hokey black-and-white publications that ran stories on every bit of nonsense from the moon-landing conspiracy to sewage alligators.

The specific article that had caught Mulder's eye, was headed: Gone on Breeze. Another instance of Spontaneous Combustion.

"Look familiar?" He pointed at the photograph displaying a motorcycle crashed into a tree. The rim on the wheel—she had definitely seen that rim before… in a cornfield.

Scully skimmed the article. It stated that a motorcycle had flown into a cross-section, out of a road in Mahoning County, Ohio, that the locals referred to as the 'Dead Stretch.' A gang of teenagers, whose vehicle had almost struck the errand bike, claimed that they saw it driven by a couple—a young man and woman who looked like Elvis and Marilyn Monroe impersonators. The couple, the teenagers insisted, vanished on the breeze, in a puff of ash.

Scully looked up at Mulder.

He gave her a sad smile.

And it was three weeks from that day, when, back in Ohio, a pharmaceutical sales rep was driving home to New York from a conference with a coworker with whom she had been secretly having an affair.

They were fooling around behind the wheel. She nibbled his ear, giggling, and he could barely pay attention to the road. They blew past a stop sign where they should have turned left, and didn't notice.

"You want me to pull over, Chrissy?" he asked, his voice thick with lust.

Chrissy glanced around and frowned. The road was swallowed on either side with thick cornfields that rustled in the clear moonlight.

"Wait, Jake—where are we?"

"Hm?" He looked around for the first time. "Struthers."

"No," she shook her head. "This isn't Struthers. We would have hit the town center by now—I memorized the route. We must have missed a turn. Let's backtrack."

"What? No," he shook his head. "Let's just keep going. Some other town will open up. How many cornfields can there be?"

Chrissy sighed. "Alright…"

"Do you want to pull over first?" he insisted, pinching her playfully. "Hop in the backseat for a quick minute?"

"No, Jake," she jerked her arm back. "I'm not in the mood anymore. I don't like this field—it's… creepy. Why aren't there any lights? We should be able to see a farm, or—something."

The car jerked, huffing.

"What now?" she turned, irritated.

"How would I know?" Jake leaned on the accelerator, his own voice starting to catch an edge. "Why do you always bitch at me?"

The car let out a shrill squeal, gurgled, and rolled to a halt in the middle of the road.

"Great!" Chrissy cried, voice dripping with annoyance. She jumped out of the car and kicked the door.

Jake rubbed his face, and climbed out to pop the hood.

"You should have backtracked," she said. "You never listen to me. Now we're out in the middle of nowhere, miles from town probably."

"Will you close your mouth for one minute, so I can focus on the engine, Chr—"

"Did your car break?" A small voice chimed behind them like a bell.

Chrissy and Jake whirled around to see a little girl that had no business being out in the middle of a country road.

She brushed down her pink dress and stepped closer, studying the pair.

A smile stretched across her delicate lips. "Oh, lovely," she said, and snapped her fingers.

Thank you for reading—and, yes: do be careful driving through Ohio, because I hear little Greta is still out there, waiting for someone to get lost on her stretch of road.

As for Scully and Mulder—well, they soon found themselves in another fantastic conundrum, but that, of course, is another story…