From: JTR555@aol.com (Spooky FM) Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative Subject: NEW STORY -- "Fifth Floor" Date: 29 May 1995 22:55:50 -0400 THE X-FILES "Fifth Floor" -- by Jim Riley (JTR555@aol.com) The characters and situations of the "X-Files" television program are the creations and property of Chris Carter and Fox Broadcasting and have been used without permission. No copyright infringement is intended. ================================================================ COLLEGE OF THE HOLY CROSS WORCESTER, MASS. MARCH 31, 1995 ================================================================ Jack Dowd walked down the fourth floor corridor towards the ancient elevator and the wide stairwell where the Fenwick and O'Kane buildings joined in an "L" shape. It was going on 11:30 p.m. this Friday night. He had wanted to finish up his latest assignment for art class before he was buried by papers and tests from his "real" courses. It was still early by "college-time" and he would not have missed any of the better parties planned for the night. Jack pushed the button for the elevator and waited. The old dial-type floor indicator showed that the elevator was currently in the basement. It would be a few minutes before it arrived. He put down his art portfolio and turned around to lean against the wall next to the elevator, making sure that he was away from the side where the outerdoor to the elevator would swing out from. As he did so, he found himself looking towards the stairwell. Something was different this time. The stairwell leading up to the fourth floor was fine, it was the narrower stairwell that led up from the fourth floor that was different. Both Fenwick and O'Kane only had four floors, yet there was a staircase that went up from the fourth floor to a locked door and apparently continued up from there at a right angle. From the outside, a small box-like room was visible just above where the stairwell was. College legend held that it was the fabled "exorcism room." The door at the top of the stairs was open. Jack walked towards the stairs to get a better look. 'Some maintenance person must have left it open,' he thought. Once he was standing at the bottom of the staircase, he could see that there was a landing just behind the door and that the stairs did continue up to the right from there. "It's open!!!" Jack yelled as he came running into the dorm room in Clark hall. "What is?" asked his roommate, Bob Farrell, after he pulled a beer bottle away from his lips. "The door at the top of the stairs! The EXORCISM ROOM!!!" "You're kidding me, right?!?" he said as he set down his beer. "This is it, Bob! Call the others. This might be our only chance!!! I'll get everything together, you make the phone calls. Tell them to bring their things as well." "Let's do it!!!" The students made their way back to Fenwick. There were seven of them now, five guys and two girls. Jack's girlfriend, Sarah Cunningham, and her roommate had insisted on coming along. They had to be brought up to speed on the plan, but most of what they were going to do could be explained on the walk down from the hill dorms. Jack looked around at the group as they passed through the small cemetery set aside for the college's Jesuit priests. Everyone was wearing dark clothes, not that it was really necessary, but it added to the adventure. "Okay, then," he continued, his breath visible in the cold. "Everyone knows where they'll be positioned to keep an eye out for campus security, right?" After seeing the responses from each one, he said, "Good. Here we go..." ================================================================ J. EDGAR HOOVER, FBI BLDG. WASHINGTON, D.C. APRIL 4, 1995 7:28 am ================================================================ Mulder pushed open the slightly ajar door to his basement office. It had been locked up when he had left late last night. He was sure of that. That meant one of two things. Either someone associated with Cancerman had been rifling through the X-Files again or else something had brought Scully in before 7:30 this Tuesday morning. If it was the former, he hoped that whoever it was had left a clue. Better yet, that they were still there. Mulder allowed himself to fantasize for a moment. They were still there and it was "Krycek." He had a gnawing feeling that he would be seeing Krycek again sometime soon and that surely would not be a pleasant experience. It would be better for that meeting to occur on his terms rather than Krycek's. Mulder checked to make sure the Sig Sauer P229 in his holster was ready. As the door opened up, he saw Scully seated at her desk. He wasn't sure if he was relieved or disappointed. "You're in early today," Mulder said. "For a second I thought you might have been Krycek." "In your dreams, Mulder," Scully replied with a smile. "No, actually my dreams tend more towards Michelle Pfeiffer in that rubber Catwoman outfit." "I think that was a little more than I wanted to know." Mulder just offered her that lopsided grin of his. "So, what brings you in so early? Last time you beat me in was the Excelsis Dei case." "Funny you should mention that," Scully said. "Oh, no," groaned Mulder. "We're not going back there again, are we? The Commonwealth of Massachusetts took over that place, didn't they?" "Yes, they did. This has nothing to do with Excelsis Dei." "Good. Nearly drowning in a bathroom should only be a once in a lifetime experience." "But we are going back to Worcester..." Mulder allowed himself a laugh. "What is it this time? A local claiming that the government is conducting weather control experiments resulting in the unique weather phenomenon of 'woo'?" Scully looked confused. "Woo?" she asked. "Growing up in Massachusetts exposes you to some of the most dramatic weather in the nation. I can vouch for that. Anyway, the geography of Worcester allows for the combination of just about every precipitation known to man -- 'woo.' The locals use it like you and I use 'rain', 'sleet', 'snow' or 'fog'. Only with 'woo', its all of those and more at the same time. It 'woos' about 200 days a year there. We were lucky last time. We actually saw the sun." "I'll pass that along to Willard Scott, Mulder." Turning more serious, Scully changed the conversation dramatically. "We've got three dead college students. State police can't determine a cause of death, but they know for sure that each case was the result of unnatural causes." "Or supernatural?" Mulder added. "I thought that would get your attention." "What are we waiting for, Scully? Grab your umbrella..." ================================================================ UMASS MEDICAL CENTER WORCESTER, MASS. 1:11 pm ================================================================ Scully walked out of the examination room where the autopsies had just been completed on the three victims. She pulled down her green surgical mask and stripped off her gloves, tossing them into a nearby receptacle. "Well, Mulder, there are no signs of any trauma to any of the victims. In fact, there were no signs of anything. Its as if they just died of natural causes, but--" Mulder picked up from there. "--but the victims were all in their late teens or early twenties and in good health. And they all died at the same moment. Should I call Vegas for the odds?" "You might want to wait for the toxicology report. It should be ready in a couple of hours. I've never seen anything like this. There must be something that we're missing," Scully said. "Always a scientific explanation, Scully." "Do YOU have any idea what happened here?" Mulder stopped and thought for a moment. "No, but I'd like to talk to some people who might." "Like I said before, the toxicology reports won't be ready for another couple of hours," Scully said. "Just give me a minute to change out of these scrubs. Where do you have in mind?" ================================================================ DINAND LIBRARY ARCHIVES COLLEGE OF THE HOLY CROSS 2:17 pm ================================================================ The Jesuit priest shuffled slowly towards the locked door to let Mulder and Scully into the college's archives. He had to be at least 75 years old by the look of him. His back stooped when he walked, giving them a full view of the thinning white hair atop his head. He tugged at his unbuttoned dark blue sweater, adjusted his thick bifocals and pressed the button releasing the electric lock on the door. "You must be Father Pawl," Mulder said as the priest opened the door for them. "Yes. Dean Cawley told me that you would be coming. Please come in." "I'm Agent Mulder and this is Agent Scully," Mulder said as he gestured towards his partner. "We were hoping that you could answer some questions that we have about the history of the college." "Well, you've come to the right place, Agent Mulder. Have a seat. What would you like to know?" Scully and Mulder sat down in the two chairs in front of the archivist's desk as the elderly priest eased into his swiveling chair. Scully glanced down at her notepad while Mulder leaned forward to begin asking questions. This was his turf. Perhaps she would ask an environmental question or two about the place where the bodies were found. Maybe she could find something out now that would make sense once the toxicology reports came back. "We're investigating the deaths of the three students who died here last weekend. According to the police reports, they were found in the Fenwick building--" The priest cut off Mulder. "Yes, what a tragedy. Those young men had their whole lives ahead of them. The Dean of Students office is offering counseling to any students who need it. Some exams may need to be delayed. The roommates of those poor boys will be granted automatic 4.0s for the semester with the option of taking time off from school." Scully looked down at her pad again. It was still empty. She doubted that this meeting would provide anything worthwhile. At least she now knew that it was true, at least at this college, about getting an automatic 4.0 if your roommate died. That legend was the Holy Grail of college students everywhere. "I can appreciate the impact that this must have had upon the student body," Mulder said in an attempt to regain control of the direction the conversation was heading. "What can you tell us about the history of the building?" "The cornerstone was laid on June 21, 1843 by Father Charles Constantine Pise," the priest began. "He was the chaplain for the United States Senate before that, you know. By the spring of 1845, there were fifty students living there. They attended classes in that same building." "Was that the first building here on the campus?" Scully found herself asking, surprising herself. "Oh, no," Pawl said with a smile. "That would be Campion Hall. You'd find that just up the hill." Now it was Mulder's turn. "How about the structure itself, Father. Have there been any changes, additions?" Father Pawl turned back to answer Mulder's question. "Actually, there was a major fire in 1852 that destroyed much of the original structure. The initial building was only three stories. When they rebuilt it, they raised it to four full stories and added the towers you see now." "You mentioned a fire," Mulder interjected. "Did anyone die in the blaze?" "No, thank God," the priest replied. "Everyone got out safely according to all the accounts that we have." "Any reason you might have to doubt the accuracy of those accounts?" Mulder followed up. "No, Agent Mulder. In the thirty years that I have held this position, I've found the records that we have to be extremely accurate. In fact, the archives here are used by many of the Catholic Orders from all across the country as the repository for important records. You don't think that something that happened nearly a hundred and fifty years ago has something to do with those boys' deaths, do you?" Mulder surpressed an inappropriate smile. "I was just hoping to get a full picture of the place where it happened. Has there been any history of reports of other strange occurrences happening on campus?" "Such as?" the priest asked with a confused look on his face. "Such as incidents of apparitions--" "You mean ghosts, Agent Mulder?" Scully thought that she saw something flicker in the eyes of the old priest. Just then the phone on the desk rang and Father Pawl slowly picked up the receiver. "Yes," he said. "I'll send them right down." Pawl looked up at the two FBI agents as he replaced the receiver. "That was Dean Cawley. He would like to see the two of you in his office right away." Mulder and Scully stood to leave, shaking the priest's hand as they made their way to the door. "Thank you for your time, Father," Mulder said in an appreciative tone. "Oh, no problem whatsoever," was the reply. "Please come back when you have more time." "We will, Father," Scully said. As they were walking down the stairs which led to the main reading room, Mulder turned and spoke to Scully. "What was that about going back to see him?" "I can't explain it, Mulder. I think that he knows something. I'm not sure what or even if he knows that he knows something." "How can you be so sure, Scully? It seemed like if he knew something that he would have said it already." "Just before the phone rang, I saw something register in his eyes. It was as if he was struggling with something inside of him. Believe me, Mulder, I went to Catholic school. He knows something." "Well, I'm not one to argue with a Catholic school girl. Maybe you should have been the one asking the questions in there." "The dean will see you now," the secretary in the waiting room announced. Mulder and Scully walked across the plush carpeting of the outer office to the ten foot high wooden double doors. Mulder opened the door and followed Scully in. "Agent Mulder, Agent Scully, I'm Dean Cawley," said the tall man with thick grey hair as he extended his hand and greeted them. "I'm sorry that I wasn't able to meet with you when you first arrived on campus. As you can imagine, these past few days have been hectic. Please, have a seat." "Thank you," Mulder said, sitting down in one of the two vacant chairs in front of the Dean's desk. "You wanted to see us right away?" Scully asked. "Yes, Agent Scully. I thought that you would want to know that the other students who were involved in the incident will be leaving for their respective homes tomorrow morning. We're holding a memorial service tonight and they wanted to stay around for it. They have been granted excused absences at least through the Easter break that ends in about two weeks. If you still want to interview them, it will have to be sometime this afternoon." "Is there an office or a conference room somewhere that we can use to meet with them?" Mulder asked. "Preferably someplace not close to where the incident took place?" "I'll arrange for it right away. You can use one of the rooms up in the Hogan Campus Center." "Thank you, Dean." Jack Dowd, Bob Farrell, Sarah Cunningham and Liz Farentino were already quietly seated around the table in the meeting room when Mulder and Scully entered. The haggard looks on all of their faces showed that they were no longer the carefree college students that they had been just a week ago. "Thank you for meeting with us," Mulder began as he and Scully sat down at opposite ends of the table. "I know that this is a very difficult time for all of you and we appreciate your being here." "I'm not sure what we can tell you that we haven't already told the police," Jack Dowd said. "Why don't you just tell us what happened," Scully replied. "Sometimes people forget to add details when responding to specific questions or they don't think that something is relevant. We'll just sit here and listen. If any of you hear something and want to add to it, feel free to jump in." "Well," Jack began, "I had been working on an art project last Friday night. I finished up around 11:30 and was heading back to my dorm. I was going to call Sarah and then a bunch of us were going to go to an off-campus keg party on Cambridge Street. "Anyway, I was waiting for the elevator when I saw that the door to the exorcism room was open..." "Exorcism room?" Mulder interrupted, nearly jumping out of his chair. "Yeah. Didn't the Dean tell you about that? That's the whole reason why we went up there," Jack said. "He must have forgotten about that part," replied Mulder as he exchanged glances with Scully. She must have been right about Father Pawl after all. "Go on, Jack." "So, I ran back to the dorm and told Bob that someone must have left the door open. He called Tim, Joe and Scott..." Jack paused to regain his composure and then continued. "I got together a couple of flashlights, cameras, screwdrivers and a tire iron from my car. Then I called Sarah. She and Liz wanted to come along when they found out what we were going to do." "And what was that?" Mulder asked. "Get into the exorcism room," Bob said, speaking up for the first time. "Every year, students try to get in without any luck. A few of us tried it during our freshman year last year, but the door at the top of the stairs was always locked. People are always searching for other ways in through the attic, but there's just that one way in and out of there. Anyone who gets in would be legendary here on campus. Its bigger than deflating the 30-foot polar bear on the roof of the Polar Cola building that overlooks the superhighway just off campus." "I can see the attraction," Mulder said, allowing himself a slight grin which enabled him to suppress the 'your parents must be proud' comment that he had wanted to make. He noticed that Scully could not keep a smile underwraps, either. "What did you do after you got everyone together?" Jack took over once again. "We walked down the hill to Fenwick. When we got down there, we went in one and two at a time, waiting a few minutes in between. Bob and I were supposed to be the first ones in the room with Tim, but we changed it at the last minute. The four of us here took lookout positions, one on each floor right where the two buildings meet. That way we could keep watch for campus security. If someone was going up the stairs or in the elevator or if someone was coming down the hallway of either building, we could signal the others to hide. While we were doing that, the others were to go up the stairs to the room and make sure that we could get in. Once they had done that, we would switch positions and the four of us would be the first ones to actually go in." "But that's not what happened, is it?" Mulder asked, sure of the answer. "No," Jack replied as expected. "I guess that they saw that they could get in and went right in." Scully sat there silently, absorbing the account as it was being related. While she had no doubt that there had to be some scientific explanation for these deaths, she could not help remembering a discussion from her tenth grade religion class at Mercy High School, back when she had worn a Catholic school uniform and accepted more on faith. In recent times, the Church was more reluctant to perform exorcisms and rightfully so. As Scully had learned in medical school, before mental illness was readily diagnosable, people often attributed it to evil spirits and possessions. While things had changed drastically since holes were drilled in a person's skull to release the demons, other things remained the same. While the Church did not publicize it, there were still numerous priests around the world who were trained to perform an exorcism. Even less publicized were the incidents where that training had actually been called into use. It was during that religion class when the floor was open to any questions that Carla Wrigley asked the question. Apparently, she had just seen "The Exorcist" for the first time. Father Montgomery, who was visiting the class that day, had an answer that no one who was in the room that day would ever forget Dana could still see the image that she had formed in her mind of what the priest had described. An image amplified by her own recent experience with the Calusari. "What happened after they went in?" Scully asked gently, knowing that they were getting near the hardest part. "Like Jack said," Bob spoke up again, "we were posted on each floor as lookouts while the others went in. I was on the first floor, so I didn't know anything was wrong until Jack yelled down to me to go get security." Jack stared down at the floor as he talked. "I was the closest to the stairway up to the room. I could hear them moving around up there. Sarah was on the third floor and she came up to the fourth floor for a minute. Next thing I knew, I heard a loud thud and I called up to Tim. When I didn't hear anyone answer, I told Sarah to wait there, ran up the stairs and found the three of them... "That's all that I know." He couldn't continue. Sarah reached over and held his hand. After a moment, she said, "What about the light, Jack?" "What light?" he replied. "Did you see something else, Sarah?" Mulder asked. "Well, after I went up to the fourth floor and right before we heard the thud, I saw the camera flash go off. It couldn't have been even a second later when I saw a brighter flash. I didn't even think of it until just now. Right after I saw it, we heard that noise and Jack ran upstairs. He must have had his back to the stairway when the flash happened." "Does anyone have anything else to add?" Mulder said. Sarah's roommate, Liz, who had remained silent the entire time, only shook her head 'no'. "Okay, then. Thank you for all of your help. Agent Scully and I are sorry about what happened to your friends. We're going to do everything we can to find out what happened to them." Mulder stood outside the campus convenience store, waiting for Scully to get off the payphone. 'Ahhh, to be in college again and be able to lay down with a coed as the sun starts to get low in the afternoon sky...' he thought as he watched students go in and out of the store. Scully hung up the phone and walked over to Mulder. "Keeping yourself out of trouble, Mulder?" "Just enjoying the scenery," he smiled. "Well, the results of the toxicology work-ups came back inconclusive. Nothing out of the ordinary," she reported. Then added, "What did you make of their story about an exorcism room?" "I think that's a question for your good friend Father Pawl," Mulder answered. "I'd like to get a look at the scene itself, not to mention the picture that was taken in there when this happened. In the meantime, why don't you check and see if there were any lightening strikes, shooting stars or any other atmospheric disturbances last Friday night about the time this happened." "One step ahead of you, Mulder. I've already put in a call to the National Weather Service at the Worcester airport. I have to call back in half an hour while they double check, but according to the person I spoke with, it was a clear, calm night." Mulder looked at his watch. It was nearly five o'clock in the afternoon and his stomach rumbled. "Well, it looks like we're going to be here at least another day. Why don't we get a couple of rooms at the Marriott downtown and then grab some dinner." "I hear that there's a Chaco Chicken around here someplace..." "I think that I just lost my appetite, Scully." ================================================================ DINAND LIBRARY ARCHIVES COLLEGE OF THE HOLY CROSS APRIL 5, 1995 9:53 am ================================================================ "Good morning, Agent Mulder. Agent Scully. I'm glad that you could come back," Father Pawl said as they repeated the drill that they went through yesterday. Once everyone was seated, he continued. "What more can I help you with?" "We spoke with the other students who were involved in last Friday's incident," Scully began. "They mentioned that the place they were trying to get into is called 'The Exorcism Room' by students. Could you..." Father Pawl sighed as a long buried memory resurfaced. Scully stopped in mid-sentence. "Father Pawl, are you all right?" she said. This time, Mulder sat by as a spectator. "Yes, yes. I was hoping that this wasn't the case. When I heard about what happened, I didn't want to believe that it was possible for it to happen again. I am such a fool." Mulder could no longer contain himself. "You mean this has happened before?" "Yes, Agent Mulder. The room where those boys died was used to perform exorcisms. But that was years ago. I was hoping that the evil had left that place." "What exactly happened, Father?" Scully asked. "I had just entered the priesthood. It was 1938. As I mentioned to you yesterday, the archives here are used as a central repository by Catholic Orders from all across the country. In those days, we did more than that here. "When Fenwick was rebuilt after the fire and the fourth floor and towers were added, the room at the top of where Fenwick and O'Kane join was built as well. The only purpose of that room was to provide a safe place to perform exorcisms. Only one way in and out. We were the place chosen to handle the most difficult exorcisms in this part of the country -- from Maine all the way down to Baltimore. "A young man was brought in. To this day, I don't know his name or where he came from. They are here in these records," he said, gesturing around him to the rest of the archives, "but I have no desire to know the name of that devil. "The boy was brought right into the room. He was hissing, speaking in unknown languages. I could feel the evil. "Three priests who had performed their share of exorcisms were locked in the room with the boy. I was one of the priests guarding the door during that exorcism. They were up there for three days. All the while, those of us at the bottom of the stairs could hear the hissing, the screaming, the cussing. Then, there was a bright flash of light visible coming from the room followed by silence. When we went up to check on them, we found the three priests dead on the floor and the boy was gone." "Gone?" Scully said incredulously. "If he didn't come down the stairway, where did he go? Could he have escaped through one of the windows? Perhaps he climbed down a trellis or the ivy on the side of the building." "No, Agent Scully," Father Pawl replied in a tone that almost wished her theory were true. "No trellis. And the vines would never have supported his weight. Regardless, all the windows were locked from the inside." "Do you have any idea what killed those priests?" Mulder asked. "There have only been two other documented cases that I have seen involving the death of a priest during an exorcism," the Jesuit answered. "In both instances, only one priest died. The other priests who were present at those events claimed that the demon pulled the soul of the priest with it into the well of souls created during the exorcism." "What's this 'well of souls' you just mentioned?" inquired Mulder. "Imagine that you have something that you want to get rid of, but cannot destroy," the priest explained. "You dig a deep hole, put it at the very bottom and cover it back up again. That's essentially what a well of souls is." "You mean that you just don't cast them into the bowels of Hell?" Mulder said, a touch of sarcasm in his voice. "That is only for God to decide, Agent Mulder. No mortal has that kind of power. All those who perform exorcisms can do is let the Power of God use them as His instruments. They open a well and trap the evil." "Does it look anything like this?" Mulder asked as he reached into his coat pocket and produced a photograph that they had picked up earlier this morning. The priest studied the photograph. In the center of the picture, there was just an immense blackness with three tiny pinpoints of light. Around the edges of the picture, the room looked normal. "The State Police have tried to enhance the picture, but that's the best resolution they can get," Mulder continued once he had given Father Pawl an opportunity to study the photo. "We've sent another copy off to the FBI labs to see what they can get out of it. There doesn't appear to be anything wrong with the camera that would explain the darkness in the center." "That's a well, Agent Mulder," Pawl replied. "My God..." "What is it?" Scully asked in a concerned voice. "I just realized... Those pinpoints of light..." "What are they, Father?" Mulder said. "The souls of the priests who died. They're still in there." "Do you believe that those priests' souls are trapped in there, Mulder?" Mulder put on his sunglasses as they emerged from the library and started down the steps. "I don't know, Scully. You tell me. You're the Catholic." "I suppose its possible. I'm not exactly up to speed in the theology department and most Catholics know more about exorcisms from what they see coming out of Hollywood than what they learn from the Church, but..." "...but there's something that you're not telling me," he said. "When we were talking with those students yesterday, I was thinking back to when I was in the tenth grade and there was a priest visiting our religion class. One of the girls in my class had just seen 'The Exorcist' and thought that it would be funny to ask a question about it. Father Montgomery didn't view it as something to joke about. Let's just say that anyone who was in that room has this image burned in their minds of a little boy, kneeling on an altar, repeatedly smashing his head against the floor and then kneeling upright again without ever bending his knees." "Are you sure that he wasn't just telling you scary stories?" Mulder asked, stopping midway down the stairs. He could hardly believe what he was hearing from Scully, simply because it was coming from her to begin with. "That's what I thought at first, but now I'm not so sure. Mulder, as a doctor, I'm trained to look for the scientific explanation. Moses may have parted the Red Sea, but there is a scientific explanation for how he did it. Whether God used the laws of nature to enable Moses to do that, I don't know. There may very well be a scientific explanation for these deaths and the deaths of those priest back in 1938, but that explanation may be incomprehensible to modern science. "One of the students yesterday mentioned that there was a bright flash just before they heard the students in that room fall. Father Pawl mentioned a bright light as well in his account. I would say that if there is a scientific explanation, it involves that flash." Scully started down the stairs again, Mulder hurrying to catch up to her. "Let's check out the room," he said. Mulder and Scully ducked beneath the police line at the bottom of the stairway and climbed up the steps to the door. Mulder slid the key that he had obtained from Dean Cawley into the lock and turned it. The door opened inward and they entered. The two of them stood on a landing, looking up the next set of stairs which led to another landing before the stairs took another right turn around a corner. The agents proceeded slowly up the steps. 'Good thing we're doing this in the daytime,' Mulder thought. 'Even I wouldn't want to come up here in the dead of night if I didn't have to.' They took the turn of the stairway and continued to the top where they found a locked door and a panel of plasterboard pulled away from the wall. Mulder took out a microcassette recorder and switched it on to record his observations. "The door at the entry to the place of death has scratches, indicating attempted forced entry. To the left of the door, a section of the plasterboard wall three feet off the floor has been pulled away, providing access to the room." Mulder handed Scully the set of keys. As he stuck his head through the opening in the wall, she opened the door. "The room appears to be used for storage. I would judge the dimensions to be approximately ten feet by fifteen. There are four windows -- two on the north side, two on the east side. Each is extremely narrow, no more than a foot wide." Mulder pulled his head back out of the wall and used the door that Scully had just entered. She was surveying her surroundings as he entered. Sunlight shone through the small windows, illuminating the room. "On the other side of the wall through which the victims gained entry," he continued, "there is a large shelf over which they would have had to have climbed to get in. The outlines made by the police on the floor of the victims' bodies are along the same wall which was breached. This fact, along with the accounts of the survivors regarding the amount of time the victims spent up here, indicate that death occurred shortly after all three had entered the room." Mulder hit the 'pause' button on the recorder. Scully was standing in the middle of the room now, having already taken a cursory look around the place. "Find anything, Scully?" "Just lots of old junk. Do you want a program from the 1987 production of 'The House of Blue Leaves'?" "That's okay. I'll wait for the movie." Mulder backed up against the wall where the shelf was, close to where the wall had been pried away. "Come over here, Scully." "What is it?" she said as she joined him. "This looks to be about from where that picture was taken," he replied as he set down his recorder on the shelf and pulled out the photo again, holding it so they could both see it. "What do you think?" Mulder asked. "It looks like the area around the dark spot in the photo is distorted." "Right. The space between that broken chair and that file cabinet," he said as he pointed to them, "appears much greater in the photograph. As if the space in there were pulled apart. Plus, around the very edges of that dark spot, the items in the background seem to be slightly distorted in depth." "The well of souls?" "That would be my guess," answered Mulder as he stepped forward. "That would place it right about...here." Mulder looked around from where he stood. Nothing seemed special about this spot. Nothing. "Hmmm. I want to do a walk-around of this room before we go," he said. "Okay," Scully replied. "If you don't mind, I'll head down to the Dean's office and return the keys. Should I check on flights back to Washington?" "Yeah. I don't know how much more we can do here," Mulder sighed as he crouched down to inspect an area around the file cabinet. "Once we're finished with the room here, we should be all set. We've interviewed everyone and gotten copies of the police reports. You finished with all the medical examinations and tests?" "Any additional tests can be run in Washington. I'll meet you downstairs." "That's alright. I think that I'm all done here. C'mon, let's go." Mulder got up and they walked out of the room, locking the door behind them. 'I can't believe that they couldn't get us out on a flight until noon tomorrow,' Mulder thought as he tossed and turned in his bed at the Marriott. 'It wouldn't have been so bad to be stuck here an extra night if Springsteen or Billy Joel were playing at The Centrum. Of course if they had been, I probably couldn't have gotten tickets anyway. Oh, well.' After another half-hour of sleeplessness, he decided that so long as he was up, he might as well do something useful. He turned on the light and pulled his laptop computer out of his travel bag. 'May as well get some work done.' As the computer booted-up, he gathered his notes together and searched for his tape recorder. While he could probably reconstruct much of what he had recorded, he preferred to transcribe his verbatim account of what he had observed before starting work on a report. Besides, it would be a shame to waste a perfectly good recorder. He concentrated on where he might have left it. He checked his coat pocket. Not there. He hoped that he had left it in the car, but he knew where he left it. He stood trembling at the foot of the stairway. He had to go up. For their sake, he had to go up. Father Pawl began climbing the steps up to the fifth floor. Since he saw the picture this morning of the well of souls, he knew that he could not just sit by when he could do something. Those priests had suffered in there for close to sixty years and he would rather be damned than let the same things happen to those boys. He passed by where he had guarded this room as a young priest. He had a duty to guard the world from this evil. It had been his duty then, as it was once again now. 'I really don't want to go up there. Not at this time of the night,' Mulder thought as he rolled up the car window. At least he had gotten a kick out of the reaction he had just received from the security guard in the booth at the entrance to the campus. 'I guess that they don't get too many FBI agents here at two in the morning.' 'Why am I here now?' he asked himself. 'I could have just as easily come here first thing in the morning.' 'Because you're curious. You want to see where it happened, the way they saw it,' his mind answered. Mulder parked his car in front of O'Kane in a "No Parking" zone and got out. He walked around the corner of the building to the basement entrance to Fenwick, stopping into Security first to let them know he was there and not to ticket his car out front. Like he really cared about getting a ticket from campus police anyway. Seeing another human being in the building was reassuring, though. He went over to the elevator and pushed the button. He noticed that it was currently on the fourth floor. The dial slowly turned, in a jerky manner, until it read that the elevator had arrived at the basement level. The elevator arrived at the fourth floor and Mulder swung open the outer door. He turned to his left and started towards the stairway. The heaviness of his high-powered flashlight felt good in his right hand. As he got closer to the bottom of the staircase, he noticed that the bottom door was slightly ajar. Someone had been in there since he and Scully had left earlier in the day. After a few more steps, he was sure that he could hear voices. Mulder hurried under the yellow police tape and bounded up the stairs to the first door. Once he reached the first landing, he could make out a voice. Father Pawl's. "Father Pawl!!!" he called out, but did not receive an answer. Instead, he heard the priest's voice grow louder, more forceful. He could now tell that the priest was reciting something in Latin. "Father Pawl!" he called again before racing up the next set of steps to the second landing, his powerful flashlight showing the way. One more turn, a few more stairs and he'd be at the top. Just then, he heard the priest utter in Latin, "...and they shall go free." A blinding light flashed. It took a few moments for the effect of the flash to wear off. Fortunately, his eyes were better adjusted since he had been using the flashlight. Once he could see again, he leaped up the remaining steps to the exorcism room. Father Pawl lay on the floor in the middle of the room. Mulder went right to his side and checked the carotid artery in the priest's neck for a pulse. It was just as he had thought. Mulder took out his cellular phone and pushed the memory dial for the number of the hotel that he and Scully were staying at. After a moment, he was put through to Scully's room where he heard a sleepy voice answer. "He's dead, Scully. I think that you'll want to come right over." ================================================================ FROM THE FINAL REPORT ON CASE: 351969 FBI SPECIAL AGENT FOX MULDER ================================================================ Father Pawl's death has been ruled the result of natural causes, brought about by old age. While the autopsy showed evidence of heart disease as well as other common ailments associated with the aging process, nothing was found of the magnitude to have actually brought on death. It is my belief that Father Pawl died while in the act of freeing the souls of the three students who died last week and the three priests who died over fifty years ago. In order to set free those trapped in the "well of souls" that he described without letting the evil go free, he took upon himself the duty of guarding the opening, completing the job that he undertook decades ago as a young priest. His final sacrifice, in a life based upon that very premise, will allow those he released to finally rest in peace. ### THE AUTHOR IS A 1991 GRADUATE OF THE COLLEGE OF THE HOLY CROSS. HE ACTUALLY ENTERED THE "EXORCISM ROOM" AND LIVED. (HE RESERVES THE RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT ABOUT THE POLAR BEAR.) ###