Update update update!

Hello, true believers. All right... it has been a while. I've been a bit busy, as you might expect. That said... writing is in the blood. So, I will attempt to spill some of that over the electronic page.

I'm an editer: not an editor but an editer. Like the dog to his vomit, so the fool to his folly, etc etc. I went back and examined some of this and cringed at a broad array of continuity errors. You were all nice enough not to point them out, for which you will be rewarded when I assume overlordship of the earth, etc etc. (Make sure to print off this page.) How can I apologise? I made the errors, they were there. It was a sobering realisation. What can I say? The other job eats up a lot of mental resources, and those are resoundly finite.

This said: I am, when I can no longer look at the real job stuff, attempting to continue this exercise, Carver Edlund-style. (Yes, I know who that is. Clearly I've admitted that now. Let's move on.) Yes indeed, I am posting cleany-style chapters today to replace the old ones. I know I've had you guys in the air for a while, and for that I do apologize. It truly isn't fair. Job job job. Sigh.

So, I hope the revised chapters are better, and that you like them more. That's the point, ultimately. There will be more coming, and soon. I will - God help me - try to make it a regular Friday thing. You heard it here first, and this is probably where the justifiable recriminations will start. I never should have put it print, that's what they'll say. Also, I'm clearly a formatting knob-end as regards this site. Sorry about that too.

Please to enjoy.

The following is something I did as a bit of a writing exercise, and for the amusement factor. I've been a fan of both shows for a while and I had a creative urge to scratch which doesn't get much traffic in the regular job. I like feedback, generous to brutal, so be sure to provide it. Suggestions welcome.

Please note that this is not – NOT – in any sense, a vehicle for so-called 'slash' fiction, unless you count the blatantly obvious crossover among shows. If you're looking for that… well, read it anyway. And make sure to give it top ratings, if only in shameful restitution for your moral failings. =)

Not that I judge, of course: it is not for me to judge.

I only tell the story.

GP

Red Eyes

Chapter One: The Ties That Bind

Miranda Hearns stood at her kitchen window, staring out at her lawn and the dark woods beyond it.

She'd spent a good few years there, she thought. A long time. A woman spent so many years of her life asleep, so many driving, so many in the shower, so many in love, so many out of love; so many years in the company of others, and so many alone.

Miranda had been alone for a long time since Tom had moved on, and the bottle had borrowed her husband for a year or two before that. Afterwards, she'd hoped he might return someday – thin years of checking the driveway, the mailbox, glancing at the phone. She looked down at her hands; it had been a long time. There was dust on that trail.

She could see the old swings in the backyard. Tom had built the swingset and slide secondhand in that other life. They were rusted and old too, with weeds all around. She'd never had the heart to have them removed. She wanted to. Maybe tomorrow, she thought, in the way of those driven into quiet desperation. Maybe tomorrow I'll start over. It's never too late. She set the last dish in the rack; she never bothered drying them, because it seemed a waste of time, even to those who had too much time to fill. Weeds grew thick in the long grass of her backyard.

In that other time, before coming to Sedaia, Colorado, Miranda had been a city girl from El Paso. They had had a child, a boy. Christopher had had a smile like his mother and eyes like his father. They had loved him very well; he had been tall and happy and strong. Christopher had loved the swingset, had worn the wooden seats pale with use, had ridden the green plastic slide till it bowed and bleached and cracked. Tom had moved them to the country because the city had been no place to raise children.

Unfortunately, it had turned out that the country had been no place to raise children either.

Not that it was Tom's fault; it was no-one's fault, except the man who had done it, of course – everyone said so. It was not like Sedaia, it was nothing like Sedaia; they were more common in the cities. But here had come one who had been where he was not supposed to have been. And Christopher was gone.

It had happened when Tom had taken Chris hunting. She always called Christopher Chris when they had done such manly things together. In the dark places between the hours she had half expected a hunting accident out in the brush; a horrible mistake, apologies, ruined lives. She had hardened herself against the possibility, steeled herself to that remote, unlikely tragedy. But it had not happened. That had not been what had killed Christopher, her Christopher. What exactly had happened, they had never said and in the dark, honest deeps of her mind, where no lies could be told, she had to admit that she had not really wanted to know. She knew Christopher had not been alone: Wigel and Bellamy were gone, too. She'd never seen her son after that day. Christopher's casket had been closed and it had been Tom who identified…

She sighed and picked up a cup, then put it down again. The police assured her that Christopher had not suffered; more than that, they were sure he had not suffered. She could see it in their eyes. How they could have known that was not clear; from the body, she supposed. And Tom, well, Tom had done something. They had all done something. But all of that had not helped. It had not brought Christopher back. How could her man possibly have changed that?

It was hot tonight. It had been hot all week, the heat crawling into Colorado like a lizard until the state was blanketed in thick, humid air. The last time it had been like this was twenty-two years ago – the year that her Christopher had been taken away. Perhaps this was why her mind was taking strange roads tonight.

The sweltering night breeze wound through the backyard. The swing where Christopher – toothy, laughing boy in her mind's eye, not what they had found in the trees, the remains that she had never seen – swung back and forth, restless in the hot dark with the chirping crickets.

She started, and frowned. It was not breezy. The branches of the trees were still. The grass was not waving in the breeze, the washing on the clothesline was perfectly, completely motionless.

She looked again. No, no, she was right. Nothing was moving.

Except the swings.

An atavistic string tied to her heart gave a sharp, plaintive pull. Miranda didn't believe in all that nonsense about spirits and ghosts; she'd come from a Methodist minister whose extremity of faith had driven out a belief in the afterlife or anything in between as ruthlessly as a glacier, culminating in a final, bitter argument and thirty years of empty phone lines. But there was something about that ghostly motion that stirred a desperate flutter in her heart and before she knew it she was standing in front of the porch, clutching the dishtowel, watching the swings move back and forth, back and forth until they were as still as everything else.

Miranda trembled, standing in the grass now. Coyote. A coyote, or maybe a jackrabbit that had darted by, or a puff on wind, on this windless night. Tom had hunted coyote sometimes; 'varmint clearing' he had called it. Christopher was not coming back. He was never coming back. The weather had reminded her, and the scents in the air. Smell was a reminder. Smell was a shadow.

There was no one to see, but Miranda Hearns suddenly choked and pressed her hands – aged, tired hands – to her face to hold back her tears, but they came faster and then they were flooding out of her. She fell to her knees and wept and wept until her sides ached and not another tear could come. She wept until it ran cold and salty down her wrists like silver tracks in the moonlight, until she could not see and all sound and smell and shadow was blocked out and nothing but the tiny flame of her grief was left.

She breathed slow and hard, hiccupping when she was done. Slowly, she cuffed the tears from her eyes, wiped her nose with the tea-towel and stood. She stared at the swingset, but there was nothing there; no ghost, no spirit, only a sharp, unmoving ache of the mind. She hiccupped again, holding a palm to her chest and letting the last wisps of pain rise into the still, muggy night air. She turned to go back inside, sore feet turning taking the divot in the grass to her back door. Christopher had been exorcized for another year, perhaps, or until she would think of him again.

She had only taken two steps when she heard it, a sound she thought might crack her heart and mind.

Mom, the voice said.

She froze and did not turn around. It was a trick of the wind, a creak of the trees at the wood's edge, the stray rustle of a rabbit or a prairie dog in the long grass.

Mom, Chris' voice said again. There was no mistake. A voice dead twenty-two years strummed her heartstrings and she thought she would break, or faint, or scream.

Slowly, Miranda turned towards the sound.

Then she did scream.

The black '67 Impala – a rare and dying breed of that kind of vehicle known as the muscle car – thundered west on Highway 70, the sun bright in the windshield and Black Sabbath thudding in the radio. It carried two men; a driver and passenger. The former was square-shouldered with a sharp crewcut, the other a hulking giant with hair down past his ears slouching in the passenger seat. They were inconspicuous in the way of the young: fitting in by standing out.

The radio was blasting. 'Whoo, yeah!' the first man howled, tapping the wheel slowly in time to No Stranger to Love. 'That Ozzie. Thirty years of solid gold.'

The tall one glanced that way. 'And the drug abuse, the family issues? Ozzie Knows Best?'

'You watch how you talk about the prince of rock and roll, Sam. It's like the devil: say his name and he shall appear.' The first man tapped his thumbs on the wheel as the car roared along. 'Where we going, Ponch?'

'We covered this last night, Dean.'

'Yeah, but, ah – ' and the man called Dean made an awkward bottle-tipping motion toward his lips, an earnest expression on his face. 'So c'mon, Sammy: hit me with it one more time.'

'Sam,' the giant corrected him as he opened a wide valise at his feet. A manila envelope inside was marked 'CASES, CURRENT' in faded blue ink. The cover was partially defaced with the phrase 'VAN HALEN RULES' in large mixed-color block letters, and with rude sketches half-heartedly obliterated with a felt-tip marker. He hesitated. 'Look, I don't want you to flip out, okay?'

'Flip out? Jesus, Sammy, I'm a professional.' Dean looked genuinely affronted. 'A little professional courtesy here.'

'Sam. Don't say I didn't warn you, because I told you about this last night. And you agreed. All right?' Dean made no admission now and Sam pressed on. 'We're headed to Sedaia, Colorado.'

'Okay. And soo…?' Dean prompted.

'And so two people have gone missing in Sedaia – '

'Don't they just,' Dean interjected, shaking his head in mock disappointment.

' – neither leaving a forwarding address or telling anyone, relatives or neighbors where they were going. There's some strange implications that the papers don't really seem to want to say either. It's not on the page but it's between the lines. So, I was thinking, maybe cult stuff, you know.'

'Huh,' said Dean pensively, letting out a breath through his nose. 'I guess. Maybe. But… that's it? No weird? No… you know? What's our stake, Sammy?'

'Well.' Sam hesitated again. 'Actually, there has been some strange activity.' Sam tensed as Dean shot him a critical sideways look. 'People have been… well, seeing things.'

'What things?'

'… Lights.'

'Lights?' Dean was frowning now, as if trying to isolate a memory from a lifetime of experience.

'And, uh… shapes.'

'Shapes?'

'Yeah.' Sam took a breath. 'In the sky.'

Immediately Dean tensed. His foot eased up on the accelerator and the purr of the Impala churned lower as if sensing his mood. 'What kind of shapes and lights?'

'Well, they're…' Sam thought, but there was nothing else for it. '… not identified.'

Dean came right off the accelerator and the beast growled as it slowed. 'Oh come on, Sammy!' He smacked the wheel hard. 'Not identified? I know what that means! UFOs! Little green men! You keep trying to sneak that stuff in, but you know it's crap! You know what Dad would say! In twenty years of hunting this country one end to the other, he never found nothing that ever proved there was any such thing. Goddammit, Sammy, that ain't no job for us!' He thumped the wheel again and seemed to slump in his seat, steering with one hand and rubbing his temple with the other.

Sam, not quite withered, continued. 'And there's been some cattle mutilations.'

'Oh, right,' Dean mumbled. 'Good. Little green guys needed a snack. Any probing? Is there any probing, Sammy? 'Cause I could reeally get into interviewing some of them probe-ees again. Like out in Gulf Breeze? Remember Gulf Breeze?'

'I remember you hit on a lady that turned out to be a – '

'Don't change the subject!' Dean barked. 'We've been over this before, we don't – '

'Look, it is what it is, okay?' Sam finally fired back. 'I told you already! Everything is quiet! Nothing is going on, or nothing I can find anyway, and this has the benefit of actually happening. Lots of people have seen it, and it's in the papers. Okay?!'

'Oh, the papers! Oh good! 'Cause they never get anything wrong, Sammy. Wait a minute.' A sudden thought had struck Dean. 'Why did you buy the Jim Beam? Were you trying to liquor me up so I'd agree to this?'

'Of course not,' Sam lied. 'Look,' he said with heat, 'we're not hunting anything else right now, so I thought maybe we could go check it out. Okay? I'm just trying to keep us busy. Keep our mind off… other things. Dad, demons, deals. Better we go on a… a snipe hunt, than do nothing at all! And weirdly-slaughtered cows are still weirdly-slaughtered cows, Dean! Missing people are missing people! We do weird, just like you said. This is weird! And – and for all we know it really is some kind of weird monster, or a cult gearing up for something bigger, like a person. The worst we can get out of this is to show up and put the fear of God in them, or take them out. That's positive, isn't it?'

Dean was fuming. 'I'll tell you how it's going to be: we run around town for weeks, interviewing little old blue-haired ladies about funny little men on their porch and prodding smelly, stinking cow carcasses. And you know what we'll find? Nothing. Dad went on a hundred of these hunts, and he never found anything under the crazy surface but more crazies.' He said nothing for a while after that. Then: 'Okay, Mr. Optimism. I get it. It's just…I hate the freaks that come out for these things, you know? I mean, first it's the lights in the sky, then it's the cow mutilations, and all that sounds fine, but then it's abductions, and probings, and hybrid alien babies and government conspiracies and telepathic contact with beings from Zeta-9. I mean, you ever get the impression that that the government knows what's going on so well they have a handle on anything like that? That they care? How many times you ever see a government spook on one of our jobs? You ever think that? It's crazy.'

Sam shrugged; spit though he might, Dean was as good as in the bag and now was the hour to wax rhapsodical. 'Well then we see the sights, have a few beers, check out the local scenery. If we find anything, great. If we don't, well…' He decided to put the frosting on it after all. 'I hear they have a really huge ball of yarn there.'

Dean hesitated. Trees and fenceposts crawled nearer, then whipped by as they passed. 'How huge?' he asked finally.

'Like… really big.'

A long pause now. 'Well, all right. But it better be a big one.'

Another car, much unlike the Impala, was heading to that day. It was a quite new – 2012 – Swedish import boasting a conservative but reliable V6 amply boosted by car magazines tailored to upscale professionals. It was archetypically inconspicuous, and therefore very conspicuous: but its passengers benefitted from that. They represented the halls of officialdom. They were heading south from Denver Airport on Highway 25 rather than across the open spaces of Middle America, for they were in the uncommon position of having almost unrestricted air mileage within the continental United States. Subject to budget. Their windows were not down; the air conditioner was on full instead. It had been a hot week in southern Colorado, possibly the hottest on record, or so the prophets of Channel 5 lay the entrails of whatever goats they were consulting.

The man's suit was plain, dark and moderately expensive; natty without being ostentatious. It was practical and economical, as fit his sort of professional. He was driving; he usually drove. He had seized this position by deceit, as he usually did. He tapped his fingers and humming along to the lyrics from a heavy metal song written by an old English rocker gone semi-pop. He didn't know the new lyrics, but pretended to know. Sometimes he could certifiably mumble his way through a stretch from the refrain.

His companion was female: a striking redhead blossoming in her mid-thirties, wearing a light green overcoat and conservative women's suit, staring dejectedly out the passenger window. The morning was clear but she was decidedly un-sunny. It had been another long red-eye flight and – as usual – she wasn't sure how she'd let him talk her into this. The flight had run into an unusual amount of chop at Denver and she did not like turbulence. 'Mulder, what are we doing here?' she asked, staring out the window.

Agent Fox Mulder glanced at the GPS. 'Should be there in about an hour, Scully,' said the man. 'We'll check in and get the lay of the land, then check in with the Sheriff and get the lay of the case.'

'That's not what I asked,' Agent Dana Scully sighed. She was a striking redhead with a heart-shaped face and bright blue eyes. Her head was propped on one hand as she leaned on the armrest, hair slightly tousled; a stance at odds with her dark office 'power suit', all severe lines and rigid cut. 'What are we doing here, Mulder?'

Mulder, a lanky six-footer with a conservative over-top haircut and an angular nose, cleared his throat, adopting a trace of his well-used ingratiating smile. It was familiar ground with them. 'Chasing leads, Scully. In the wide-open spaces.' Scully's cold look encouraged a fuller disclosure. 'June 15: just last week,' Mulder went on as if he had not been prodded to do so. 'Five people reported seeing a strange object in the sky against the sunset: faint blue lights attached to a definite silhouette that was not immediately recognizable according to Roger Ellis, age 43.'

'So?'

Mulder smiled, glad she'd taken up that particular challenge. 'So Mr Ellis one of the observers was a twenty-year army vet at Fort Drum in New York State: yet he insisted that it matched no configuration he was aware of.' Mulder took a long, sweeping turnoff. 'Then, lights were recorded on two succeeding nights; high and not blue. Now, normally I would have left the report there,' he said, attempting to establish an unimpeachable line for his provisos.

'Mulder, I think most people would have left the report there,' Scully said sarcastically.

Mulder accelerated gently and precisely into the turn. 'Well, there's more. This area is known for unusual activity, Scully. Some of the locals reported strange lights in the sky here before, back around 1990. Now, this in itself might be unremarkable – '

'I would certainly say so.'

' – if not for the fact there were also a large number of – '

'Cattle mutilations,' Scully filled in.

Mulder smiled; a little mea culpa would not go amiss here. 'As it happens: right in one, Scully. It might turn out to be nothing more than a college prank, or natural decomposition, flares… desert gas…' he added with dry comedy that Scully only raised an eyebrow at. 'But the sightings themselves were reported by over a hundred people back then, replete with changes in acceleration and course. That's a lot of people to misidentify a really strange meteor shower, wouldn't you say? And that history provokes what we're doing here today.'

Scully sighed. 'I don't suppose there's anything as concrete as a radar sighting?'

He tried a round of reverse psychology. 'That's the funny part, Scully: neither the local air strip nor the weather station confirms anything in the sky that night aside from a privately-owned Cessna.'

'Yes, that's very odd: a UFO with no radar track,' Scully said, not fooled. 'And did the Cessna pilot see anything?'

Mulder looked embarrassed. 'No, and neither did his two passengers.'

'Then there was nothing in the sky except a shooting star, coupled with mis-observation by people on the ground. Natural space debris passing at unusual angles to the ground can appear to have changes in direction and speed to the inexperienced.'

'The Cessna pilot was flying away from the area at the time the lights passed, so he may not have been in position to see anything,' Mulder temporized. 'How do you explain the other witnesses?'

'Mulder, in 1920 almost a thousand people in Spain said they'd seen Mary, the mother of Jesus, appear in the sky over Santiago, Mulder. Mass delusion: the eye sees what the mind – and everyone else's mind – wants them to see. A meteor shower becomes monsters in a flying saucer. A loaf of bread becomes Jesus' face.'

'Does a loaf of blasphemous bread abduct two people?' Mulder asked. Scully gave him a blank look. 'Your meteor shower coincides with the disappearance of one Miranda Hearns, age 55, and one Jacob Dryer, age 59. Mrs. Hearns is a divorcee that lives alone towards the north outskirts of Sedaia. Dryer is retired, wife deceased, lives or lived alone in the east side of town.' He slid a manila envelope across to her. 'Upscale dwelling. Both disappeared shortly after the lights were seen. No Jesus reported.'

Scully opened the envelope. 'Suicide. Ran off. Murdered. Fell in a hole,' she listed possibilities.

'Miranda Hearns was spotted at the supermarket Tuesday evening buying groceries and her vehicle is in residence. One neighbor, says he saw nothing. No visitors, no taxis and she wasn't known for long neighborhood walks. Personal effects are on the scene and no unusual credit card activity. In fact, no use at all in forty-eight hours. She wasn't seen by anyone after her visit to the supermarket and missed two work shifts.'

Scully made a noncommittal noise.

Mulder continued. 'Meanwhile, Jacob Dryer was last seen bragging about his first grandson to a neighbor on Tuesday afternoon.'

'Bridge?'

'Not everyone likes depressing medical dramas on a Wednesday night, Scully,' Mulder chided. 'His sister went to visit him Thursday and found the door unlocked and Dryer gone. She reported, and the first police report confirms, blood at the scene alongside a loaded and fired 12-gauge registered to the same Jacob Dryer at the house; four spent shells recovered. No body found in either location. Dryer is similarly not noted for absent spells. Vehicle in residence, no signs of robbery.' Mulder raised an eyebrow at his partner. 'Who fills up the freezer before deciding to light out for new pastures? Or is so depressed by the birth of a grandchild that they commit suicide in some out-of-the-way place? And where are the suicide notes? They don't fit the demographic, Scully.'

'Murder,' Scully concluded coolly. 'Not that uncommon in this country. What's so strange about that?'

'Nothing, except that you're forced to ask what kind of person would take on an ex-Marine with a 12-gauge, take the gun from him and then leave it behind as they removed him from the premises.' He handed her a photocopy of a military service sheet, and another of a shotgun lying discarded on a polished wood floor. surrounded by police markers. 'Two disappearances in the same small town – population three thousand and thirty-four – separated by only twenty-six hours. No other major crime reported in twenty years. That strikes me as an impressive spree, given the cirumstances.'

'Your lights in the sky, you mean.' Scully finally bit: 'How much blood?' There were dark spatterings around the weapon.

'A lot. If it's Dryer's they suspect it was a fatal amount. Local PD are on scene now, collecting samples from both sites for the forensics lab in Denver. The weapon was discharged once in the house, by the holes in the wall, and three times outside. Sedaia PD figures that Dryer was surprised by someone.'

'Any idea how the wound was inflicted?'

'Initial signs would suggest some kind of edged weapon. They don't think he was shot: no exit wound-type staining patterns in the house, just the blood.'

'Well, that doesn't sound like little green men from Mars, Mulder. What's wrong with more mundane explanations? Any ex-boyfriends or estranged husbands? Angry girlfriends? Local mob connections? Drugs or anything else stolen?'

'Like I said, no signs of robbery. Miranda Hearns had an ex-husband, Tom Hearns, 54. Guess she kept the name. Lives about two hours away. He was at work the whole week and on Sunday he was at his nephew's softball game from 10 to after lunchtime.'

'That leaves plenty of time to drive in, commit a murder and drive home.'

'True. They're checking his credit cards, phone records and alibis now. But my bet is that he isn't our man.'

'And that E.T. did it,' Scully said sardonically.

Mulder smiled again. 'Open your mind to the possibilities, Scully. Let's see what this case holds for us.'

'Oh, I can guess what it holds for us: autopsies for me. Exposition for you.'

The rest of the ride was spent in an awkward silence.

END Chapter 1