|
|
10 X 13: Just an A discovery in a vacant farmhouse brings to light two possibilities: Monica sees dead people, or she should see a shrink... |
Washington, D.C.
Oh, happy day, John Doggett thought dryly as he and his partner wandered
around the old farmhouse on the outskirts of Washington.
They had been sent here on an anonymous tip, and had completed a successful
drug bust (it was a light day at the X-files, so Skinner had given them this
case). Now they were just doing a
final check of the house, and then they would be done.
They neared the living room. A police
officer was milling about.
“The ceiling has a terrible drip,” he warned, and then went into the kitchen.
It was true. The ceiling
was stained browned from the water, and the wooden floor underneath was warped
and weak.
“This room is directly under the bathroom, which is why it must drip
so much… faulty plumbing,” Agent Reyes noted.
“Better not get to close to that patch of floor,” Agent Doggett replied.
They finished their check of the room, which happened to be the
last. They were done!
John jumped up.
“Yessss! We are so – AAAAUUUUUGGGGHHHH!!!!”
he yelled, his victory cut short as he misstepped and slipped in the puddle
on the floor. He was airborne for
a moment, before crashing down on the weak section -- actually, crashing
right through the weak part of the floor.
Monica stood for a moment and gaped, wondering dumbly if that had really
just happened. Suddenly, a moan issued
from below.
“Owwww, that really, really hurt,” Doggett groaned.
A couple of police officers had entered the room after hearing the crash.
Everyone carefully moved towards the hole in the floor, and looked
down. John appeared to have landed
in some sort of tunnel. It was about
six feet high and four feet wide.
Monica slowly climbed down into the space.
Agent Doggett’s dignity was more injured than was his body, and Agent Reyes
easily helped him up. They got out
their flashlights and peered around.
It all looked okay, until John’s flashlight beam landed on a body.
**
Agent Reyes and Agent Doggett were at the hospital.
Doggett had cut his leg when he fell, and he had to get a few stitches.
Reyes meanwhile wanted to see the results of the autopsy on the
man they had found in the tunnel.
He had been in his mid-fifties and was identified as Phil Montgomery, a high
school teacher who had gone out for a hike one evening recently and simply
never returned.
Monica headed down to the morgue, and asked to speak to the doctor who had
performed the autopsy. The doctor
freely told her that the man had died of a heart attack.
Not only that, physical evidence indicated that he had seemed to
have died of fright, most likely because he was trapped in the tunnel – possibly
during an exploration of the deserted farmhouse.
It was possible that he was claustrophobic, and he had had a heart condition
to begin with. It was an open and
shut case, according to the doctor.
Not according to Monica, though.
She thanked the doctor and went back to John.
Monica gave him a ride home, and then headed back to her place.
She made herself some dinner, and settled down to watch TV –
Mystic Pizza, one of her favorites, was on.
At 11, she went to bed, but Monica couldn’t sleep.
John Doggett residence
John, on the other hand, had eaten some leftovers and gone straight to bed.
His leg was pretty sore, and he didn’t feel like doing anything
else. At 12:30, he heard the doorbell
ring. He rolled out of bed and grumpily
went to answer it. It was his partner.
“Geez, Monica,” he said groggily, “do you know what time it is?”
“Yeah, sorry. I couldn’t sleep,”
she explained, sounding only half-sorry for the intrusion.
“Something about that whole tunnel thing is bothering me.
Want to go over there with me and check it out?”
“No.”
“Please? There’s something fishy
going on, and I want to get to the bottom of it.”
“No. Go home and go to bed.”
“I won’t be able to sleep.”
“Please leave and let me go back to bed.
I can’t function at this hour.”
“Please come?”
“No.”
“Fine.”
“Good.”
“I’m glad.”
“Me too.”
“Please?”
“No. Now will you please let me go
back to bed?”
“Fine,” Monica sighed, “call me if you change your mind.”
With that, she left, and John went back to bed.
Now that he was up, however, he couldn’t get back to sleep.
He turned on the TV. The
movie Men in Black was on.
Why not?, he thought, and settled in.
The tunnel
Monica descended again into the tunnel, and scanned the dank interior with
her flashlight. On her left, the tunnel stopped at a dead end.
On her right, however, it wound aimlessly around.
She shrugged and began to follow it.
Monica walked for about 30 minutes before she reached the end of the tunnel,
which spit out into a wooded area with a small pond.
She left the tunnel and wandered around the thicket for a moment,
then turned to look back at the mouth of the tunnel.
It was very well-camouflaged -- in fact, you probably wouldn’t see it if
you weren’t looking for it. Monica
wondered what it had been used for, and if this had been Montgomery’s point
of entry. The teacher could easily have escaped the tunnel, so what had frightened
him to the point of a heart attack? She backtracked to the farmhouse and
her car.
Monica still wasn’t satisfied, but what could she do?
J. Edgar
Hoover Building
The next day at work, Agent Reyes’s eyes were puffy from lack of sleep.
John’s weren’t much better.
“We need some extra strong coffee today,” Agent Reyes commented.
“I know just the place,” John replied, and dragged her to the car.
Tommy
and Gina’s diner
John and Monica walked into a small diner near the J. Edgar Hoover building.
A man was busy behind the counter, and his face brightened when
John entered.
“Hi John, how’s it going?” he asked.
“Okay, but I’m really tired. We need
two cups of the strongest sludge you got.” Agent Doggett replied.
“Sure,” the man said. “Coming right up.
Who’s your friend?”
“This is my partner, Monica. Monica,
this is Tommy. He runs this joint,”
John said.
“Hi, Monica; pleased to meet you,”
Tommy waved.
“You, too,” she replied.
The morning rush had wound down, and the agents and Tommy chatted easily
as he made their coffees. They got
their coffees and sat down in a booth.
It was obvious to Monica that John was a regular at the diner, a decent-looking
place, not too trendy for a meat-and-potatoes guy like . On the wall was
a portrait of an attractive young Spanish-looking woman.
“Do you know who that is?” Monica
asked, pointing to the picture.
“Yeah, that’s Gina. She’s Tommy’s
wife. She worked here until about
a month ago.” John informed her.
“Tommy seems like a great guy…” she commented. “What happened with his wife?”
Monica asked after a minute.
“I’m not exactly sure. Tommy doesn’t
ever talk about it, and I haven’t gotten up the nerve to ask.
Rumor has it that she was cheating on Tommy, so maybe she left with
her boyfriend.”
“Oh, that’s too bad.”
The small-talk hanging between the two drowsy agents, they finished their
coffees and headed back to an uneventful day at work.
Monica
Reyes residence
It was 1 a.m., and again, Monica couldn’t sleep.
She wanted to go back to the tunnel again, for she was sure she
had missed something. She lay in
bed for a moment longer, then got dressed and went to her car.
Monica originally had decided to go straight to the tunnel, but on the spur
of the moment, decided to stop at John’s and see if he wanted to come along.
John answered the door after about 5 minutes.
“You again? Why now?
Why not during the day?” he demanded, exasperated.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she replied simply.
“Try harder,” he growled, and closed the door.
Monica persistently rang the doorbell until he answered again.
“You know, Monica, maybe you should see a doctor about your sleeping problems,
instead of bothering me at ungodly hours,” he suggested.
“Look John, I’m sorry. But I’m wondering
if you want to go back to the tunnel with me.
Something is still worrying me.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because.”
“Why?”
“Because I’d rather sleep than investigate a case that’s already been solved,
thank you very much!”
“No, there’s still more to this than meets the eye…”
“How the heck do you know?”
“I just do. It’s a really strong
hunch.”
“Well, la-de-dah,” he groused.
“So will you come?”
“No. Why don’t you see if Scooby and the gang are doing anything?”
“Okay,” she sighed, not bothering to fight him anymore, and left.
John went back to bed, but again, he couldn’t get back to sleep.
**
Before Agent Reyes went to the tunnel, she stopped to get gas.
She also bought herself a pretzel and a coffee.
By the time she got there, it was about 1:45.
This time, on a whim, she decided to enter the tunnel from the forest
entrance.
Monica noticed a dried bouquet of flowers by the mouth of the tunnel, which
seemed kind of weird. Perhaps they
were for the guy who they’d found the other day, but who would have left
such a memorial? She walked until
she was under the house, and nothing happened.
She was about to leave when she heard a noise behind her.
She spun around. About 12 feet away,
a Spanish woman was sitting by the wall.
Her arms and legs were tied.
“Help me,” the woman yelled in fear and agony. “Somebody, please, help me!”
Monica ran over to untie her. When
she tried to untie the woman, however, her hand went right through her.
It soon became clear to Monica, who’d tangled with reincarnated
killers and a telekinetically produced Brady Bunch, that this must be a ghost.
She watched the spirit for a while.
It was having a conversation with another person who Monica could not see.
It was sort of like eavesdropping on someone talking on the telephone:
You only got one half of the conversation.
The woman’s half went something like this:
“Why would I lie to you?”
“No, I didn’t. Are you nuts?”
“Well don’t believe him, because that wasn’t me he saw!”
“You trust him? He’s a moron!”
“No, NO!”
“You can’t do this! Someone will
catch you! Just let me go and I’ll
never tell anyone!”
“Leave me alone!”
With that, it was as though someone had picked her up and roughly threw her
into a hole in the ground. It was
a grave. Monica gaped.
That grave hadn’t been there a minute ago.
The last thing she heard the woman yell was:
“No, help me! HELP ME!
You won’t get away with this.
Someone will catch you, Tommy…”
Monica was shaking. She ran out of
the tunnel and sat down for a minute.
She realized what she had just seen.
That woman had been murdered. She
knew who the woman was: Gina.
She also knew the murderer…
John Doggett
residence
John still couldn’t sleep. Why was
Monica doing this to him? Couldn’t
she see that some people actually liked to keep normal hours?
He turned on the TV, but all he could find was informercials and
Ghost, and as he hated Patrick Swayze and chick flicks, Doggett made
himself a Pop Tart, then decided to go to the tunnel and help Monica.
After all, why not?
There was nothing else to do.
The tunnel
Monica tried to collect herself, and failed miserably.
She sat there for 5 minutes, and then forced herself to get up.
She walked uneasily over to the grave, but it was gone.
The tunnel was exactly how it had been yesterday.
With shaky legs, she walked back to her car.
She knew that if someone were to dig up that tunnel, they would
find Gina’s body.
Monica had to get back and tell someone.
She cursed herself for forgetting to bring her cell phone.
She shakily unlocked her car and headed back toward the nearest pay phone.
She wasn’t really concentrating on her driving, however, and, on
top of that, her nerves were really shot.
Abruptly, she missed a bend in the road and steered right into a
ditch.
**
John was headed toward the tunnel.
He hummed along to the radio, which was playing Bon Jovi.
He absolutely loved Bon Jovi.
It was really dark, but as he rounded an annoyingly round corner, his lights
shone on a car lying in the ditch.
In shock, he realized the car belonged to his partner.
He screeched to a halt and jumped out of his car.
He ran over to Monica’s vehicle.
She was unconscious, and the car was pretty smashed up.
She had hit a tree and although the passenger side had taken the
brunt of the impact, the driver’s side was still considerably battered.
Just looking at the accident, John knew it would not be wise to try and get
her out himself, so without wasting any time, he called for an ambulance.
George Washington University Hospital
Washington
Monica came to shortly after arriving at the hospital.
She looked around, and couldn’t figure out where she was.
In a minute, of course, it dawned on her she was lying in a hospital
bed, with an IV attached to her arm.
The agent tried to sit up, but felt dizzy.
She glanced at the clock.
3:30a.m. How long had she been here?
Suddenly, her partner entered the room, concern etching furrows in his brow.
“Hi, John…” she greeted, weakly.
“You’re up!” Doggett smiled. He looked
pretty tired.
“What happened?” she asked him.
His furrows deepened. “You were in a car accident.
Don’t you remember?”
“Not really… I remember being really
freaked out…” she began.
“Well, duh! Your drove yourself right
into a tree. I’d be freaked out too.”
“No it’s not that… I mean, of course, I must have been scared when I realized
I was about to hit a tree… but there’s something else too…” she said slowly,
“like maybe I hit the tree because I was scared.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You hit the
tree because that bend in the road is hardly visible.
It was an accident waiting to happen.
If I were you, I’d get some rest and stop overanalyzing things,”
he said gently, trying to reassure her.
Monica was unconvinced, but realized how tired she was, so she temporarily
took his advice.
**
Monica had to stay in the hospital for a couple of days because she had sustained
a concussion and had had to get stitches for a gash in her arm.
On top of that, she had a couple of bruised ribs, so, needless to
say, she was surviving on painkillers.
The second day after her arrival had been pretty uneventfu.
She had tried to remember the events of the accident, and a couple
of things were coming back to her.
Something about a woman in a tunnel…
**
After three days she went home, and the next day she returned to work.
Not much was happening in the X-Files, but she was grateful for
that because she was still sore from her accident.
J. Edgar
Hoover Building
Monica walked into work on Monday morning with one thing on her mind:
coffee. The previous night
she had stayed up late reading her book, and just as she was about to go
to bed, he bruised ribs had started to hurt.
She had gone into the bathroom to get some painkillers, and accidentally
grabbed the ones that said: Non-drowsy.
The pills had kept her up for another two hours, and in the morning
she could hardly drag herself out of bed, after getting only 3 hours of sleep.
She walked up to Agent Doggett’s desk.
He was working diligently on something on the computer (Tetris, as it turned
out). His brow was furrowed, this
time in concentration at the electronic entities on the monitor.
“Uhnggh. Need coffee,” Monica groaned
Simpsonishly.
“Hang on…” he murmured distractedly. “We can get some in a minute.”
They lapsed into silence for a little while, with Monica growing more and
more impatient as John played his computer game.
She started humming a tune that she made up.
“Thanks a lot!” John said sarcastically as a defeated tone erupted from the
computer speakers. “Your stupid humming messed me up!
And I almost had a high score!”
“Sorry for your tragedy, John. Can
we get coffee now before I fall asleep right here?”
“Fine!” he sulked.
Tommy
and Gina’s Diner
The agents stopped at the diner and ordered two extra large coffees.
They sat down in a different booth.
A couple minutes later, Tommy came around.
“Hi, John, Monica, how are you guys?” he inquired in a friendly manner.
“Sleep-deprived and in a lot of pain,” Agent Reyes muttered grumpily.
“My partner was in a car accident a couple of days ago.
She just got out of the hospital yesterday,” John explained.
“Oh, no! Well, I hope you feel better
soon. What happened?” Tommy asked.
“Unnnggghh.” Monica replied in an
uncharacteristically anti-social tone.
She knew she was being rude, but at this point she really didn’t care.
John stepped in.
“There’s a bend in this country road just outside town.
At night it’s really poorly lit --”
“It wasn’t because of the lighting, John.
You know I’m a good driver.
It was something else,” Monica blurted.
“Even good drivers have a hard time seeing on that road, Monica,” Doggett
offered soothingly, like a bad auto insurance commercial.
“Maybe so, but it was something else.
I’m sure of it,” she replied.
The three lapsed into silence for a moment, and Monica stared angrily
at the table, the counter, the coffee, the window. She was having a really
crummy day -- if only she could figure out exactly what happened at the accident.
“What do you think it was?” Tommy asked carefully.
“I don’t know… It was like I was afraid of something… I remember being really
shaky, but that’s about it,” she replied, sounding frustrated and irritable.
Another table needed Tommy, so after a moment, he wandered off.
“C’mon, Monica. No need to be such
a crab. This is my friend,” John
snapped angrily.
“Whatever,” she replied, and they finished their coffees in silence.
As they were leaving, they passed the booth where they had sat last time.
Monica looked up, and notices the picture of Gina.
Suddenly it started coming together… the tunnel… the grave… Gina…
Tommy…
Luckily, John was walking behind her, and when she fainted, he caught her.
**
“Monica! Monica!
Are you okay?”
“Here, let’s prop her up. I think
she’s coming too.”
“What happened?”
“How should I know? She’s your partner!”
“She just looked at that picture of Gina, then she passed out…”
Gina…
“Whoops, she’s fading.”
**
“Alright, I think she’s finally coming to.”
“Monica? You alright?”
“Do I look alright to you?” she snarled.
“Yep, she’s back with us” John commented, “thanks, Tommy.”
Tommy… It all came back to her now.
As John helped her sit up she felt a terrible sense of urgency.
“John, we have to get out of here.” She whispered, trying not to be overheard.
Unfortunately, she was.
“Why?” Tommy asked.
“Uhhh we’re late for work…” she fumbled.
“Its okay Monica, I’ll explain what happened to Skinner.”
Her partner said. He could
be so dumb… but then again he didn’t
know about Tommy’s secret.
“John, please take me back to the office.”
“You’re the boss.”
J. Edgar
Hoover Building
As soon as they got into the office, Monica shut the door.
She turned to her partner, who had already started playing Space
Invaders. She pushed the ‘off’ button
on his monitor.
“Hey!” he exclaimed.
“Look John, I need to talk to you, and it’s very important,” she said abruptly.
“Uhh, okay. Does it have to do with
the pastry that disappeared from your lunch last week?”
“No… but what the heck happened to that anyway?” she asked.
“Never mind. What you need to talk
to me about is much more important.
Go on.,” he stammered. She rolled
her eyes, but began.
“Gina’s dead,” she said bluntly, “and Tommy killed her.”
“Yeah… OK… so what’s the punchline?”
“Punchline? Excuse me John, but what
exactly do you think would be funny about the fact that your friend killed
his wife?” she demanded, aghast.
“I asked for the punchline, because you are obviously kidding me,” Doggett
said through gritted teeth.
“No I’m not. I saw it.
I mean, I saw Gina. Her
ghost.”
“Whatever,” he replied.
“Why don’t you believe me? I wouldn’t
lie to you,” Monica said, hurt.
“Because Tommy is my friend, and I trust him.
You met the guy. He wouldn’t
hurt a fly! What do you have against
him, anyway?
“Nothing, except that he killed his wife!” With that, she stormed out of
the office.
“Where are you going?” he yelled after her.
“To arrest a murderer!” she shouted back.
Tommy
and Gina’s Diner
Monica marched into the diner and pulled out her badge.
“Monica, stop it,” John pled. She
ignored him and stalked to the counter.
“Tommy Jones, I’m placing you under arrest for the murder of Gina Jones,”
she said soberly. “You have the right to remain--”
Tommy chuckled. “What’s the punch line?” he asked.
“No punchline, Tommy. I know you
killed her,” she said menacingly.
“Monica, please don’t do this,” John begged.
“John, shut up, okay?” she growled.
Suddenly, the bell on the door jingled to signify that someone had just entered.
The agents and the restauranteur all turned.
In the doorway stood a Spanish-looking woman.
Gina…
Luckily, John was standing behind Monica so he caught her when she fainted.
**
“Man, does your partner always faint this much?,” Monica heard Tommy inquire.
“Must be pretty hard to work with…”
“She’s not usually like this. I don’t
know what’s gotten into her.”
“Monica, wakey-wakey.”
“Shut up, you idiot…”
“So what do we do? Splash her with
water?”
“I heard that’s bad for them.”
“That’s narcoleptics, idiot.”
“Maybe its bad for fainters, too…You have to wake these people slowly.”
“Well they always splash them in the movies!”
“Calm down, you two. I think she’s
coming to.”
Monica opened her eyes and saw three faces.
“What the? I thought you were dead…,”
she said to Gina.
“Well, I don’t know where you got that notion,” Gina replied.
“A tunnel…”
The tunnel
Gina had driven to Florida about a month ago, because her father had cancer,
and they didn’t think he would live much longer.
His condition had improved, though, and she had returned to Washington.
Tommy had stayed behind, but Gina had asked him not to tell anyone where
she had gone, because she liked to keep her family life to herself.
Although that aspect of the case was solved, Monica still wondered what was
up with the tunnel, which was why she and her partner had ventured there
again. They got out of the car and
grabbed their shovels from the trunk.
They went into the tunnel and began digging where Monica thought she saw
Gina being buried. They began digging.
When John’s shovel blade struck something solid and unyielding, Monica dived
to the ground, scratched away enough clods and dirt to yank it free.
She used her jacket to wipe the object. It glittered in the flashlight beam:
A perfectly cut diamond the size of a football...
Outer
reaches of the Sun’s solar system
Xoaeen and Mdaoga cackled with delight – or their world’s version of it --
as they stared at their remote monitor.
This “Reyes” was just too easy to mess with.
All you needed was a little easily gathered intelligence data, a
few simple holograms, and she would go crazy jumping to conclusions.
She was almost as fun to mess with as the earlier one. “Fox Mulder,”
Mdaoga recalled happily…
The trick to this game was to confront one of these planet’s curiously neurotic
inhabitants with some blatant violation of their physical laws, something
that defied their concepts of reality, and watch them scramble about, beating
their heads against walls and making idiots of themselves. It was enjoyable
to play with the general populace, amusing to watch the social misfits who
rejoiced whenever some unexplained apparition or specter turned up, chattering
inanely on the “Internet” that blanketed this world.
But the real joy lay in finding one of those rare beings who possessed both
intelligence and an open attitude toward the unknown and illogical. “Mulder”
had been one such creature, this “Reyes” another. They made the game worthwhile,
gave this seemingly endless interstellar monitoring mission a spark of excitement,
adventure.
Suddenly, their commander entered the room.
“What are you two up to?” she (at least, she would’ve been identified as
a she by two out of three human scientists) asked suspiciously in the series
of clicks and whirrs that marked their planet’s language.
“Nothing,” Xoaeen replied, quickly turning gray-green and hastily shutting
down the computer.
The tunnel
Suddenly, the diamond disappeared, evaporated without even a puff of dust.
The agents were stunned.
“Let’s get out of here, Monica,” John suggested shakily. “This is too weird.”
“Agreed.” Monica shivered.