Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 09:19:18 -0600 (CST)
Subject: NEW: Hoodoo (1/5) by K. Turnbull
Source: xff

Reply To: Paperky@aol.com

Hoodoo(1/5) by K. Turnbull

Title: Hoodoo
author: Kory Turnbull
Email: Paperky@AOL.com
Dist. statement: none
Rating: PG
Classification: X, with some H
Keywords: ?
Spoiler: None
Summary: The agents go to the Deep South to look into unexplained
random acts of violence. They find a secret that cannot be kept
from an unsuspecting world any longer and struggle to control an
evil that manipulates an unfortunate mans destiny for it's own
ends.
Disclaimer: Mulder, Scully and other characters associated with
the television show The X-Files belong to Chris Carter, 1013 and
FOX. No copyright infringement is intended.

Hoodoo (1/5)

  "Hey Red, find anything good?" the boy dressed in faded 
overalls with no shirt underneath called to his friend 
who was poking around a rusting old car next to a vine 
covered tumble down old house.
"Nope, Snipey," answered his crewcut pal in the cutoff 
jeans and stained tee-shirt. They went back to nosing 
around, oblivious to two shriveled figures creeping 
past them from out of the house. 
"He-yah, he-yah. Stop he-yah." A grey old lady dressed in 
rags said to her equally ancient and poorly dressed 
companion from behind an overgrown half-dead hedge.  
"Now holt stell!" she said and reached up to the 
others grimy dreadlock-like hair. She took ahold of 
several thick strands and gave them a yank upwards 
where they stayed in that position.
"Ay-oww!" the other stifled her yell with her hand, 
adding," ya' dint hafta pull `em that hart!"
"Shesh," her sister said, peering around the foliage. 
They's a' comin," and voices drifted out from behind 
the bush.
"Looka' here Snipey," Red said, holding up an old Model A 
radiator cap. He rubbed the glass to clean the dirt 
off as his pal walked over to check out his find. The 
clean glass revealed a thermometer inside.
"Cool!" Snipey said and grabbed for it. "Lemmeee see." Red 
feinted away from him and held the cap up teasingly.
"See wicha' eyes, not wicha' hands," Red said.
"Okay! Lemmee hold it then." His friend reached for it 
again and then froze, his attention diverted by 
something more interesting than this tired, worn out 
game.
"What is it Snipe? What you lookin' at?" Red looked at the 
bush. His friend had taken a birddog posture and began 
to creep slowly toward it.
"Somethin' in there," he said as Red fell in behind him. 
They crept right to it's edge when two old gray 
ghostly hags jumped out, one with her hair standing 
straight up.
"Aiieee! Booga, booga, booga!" They shrieked and rolled 
their eyes and waved their gnarled yellow curled up 
fingernails in front of them. The two boys would have 
jumped out of their shoes if they had had any on. They 
ran shrieking until they were out of sight. "Aaah.Ha 
heh heh! Hee hee hee," the dried up old women would 
have laughed enough to cry if they had enough moisture 
between them to raise a tear. "Dat da' only fun I get, 
dese days," said one as she tried to bend her hair 
back in place.
"Yep," said the other turning toward the house, "Let's get 
back an' check on Annie." They both shuffled back to 
the crumbling house and disappeared under the vines 
that covered most of it. Nothing else stirred in the 
hot sun, even when it gave way to cool evening and 
then dusk, only the bugs began to stir and fill the 
air with their commotion. Dusk gave way to the rural 
blackness of the country side and a few car lights 
were seen passing on the highway but not many. 
     Nothing had passed for some time when a little blue 
sedan pinged down the darkened highway from the East 
toward the vine covered house. Past fragrant lilacs 
and the dark formless masses of abandoned cars and 
small buildings enveloped in kudzu vines. Not a single 
light shined out of the once inhabited and now 
dilapidated buildings hopelessly covered in the fast 
growing Asian import. It was another hot Georgia night 
fit for ghosts and gators, but not a place for any 
kind of salesman.
     The car zipped around a curve in the road and halfway 
into it a beer bottle flew out of the window and hit 
the all encompassing vine which seemed to suck it up 
without a sound and make it it's own. The road 
straightened up again and the lights of a small town 
became visible in the distance. The little car with 
it's ailing four banger pinged along a little faster. 
Past another kudzu clump of a house it went. Then 
brake lights flashed red and blinding in the sleepy 
blackness. The car's white backup lights lent another 
degree of harshness to the night as it whined 
backwards and came to a stop in front of the small 
house, covered, except for some windows with pale 
light coming out of them, in thick draping masses of 
kudzu. 
   The driver of the car leaned across the empty 
passenger's seat and peered out through the blackness 
to the pale light. He felt next to him on the seat, 
underneath a pile of wrinkled clothes and came up with 
a fresh half pint of Kessler's. He held it up and 
looked through it to the light in the window. It's 
inviting amber color glowing through in the dark. He 
reached up with his other hand and twisted the cap off 
with a "scrinch" as the plastic tabs on the unopened 
bottle broke away from the rest of the cap. He said, 
"Here's to a quick sale," to himself before he lifted 
the bottle to his lips and took a long swallow.
       Outside the car now, he walked up the weedy path to 
the door. Noises from inside the house caught his ear 
and he lifted a thin eyebrow above one bloodshot eye 
and said, "Sounds like a party."  He coughed and 
giggled at the same time and took another long pull 
from his Kessler's. He set the briefcase he was 
carrying down on the ground so he could use that hand 
to pull his back pocket out and wrestle the bottle 
into it with the other. "Don't make pockets like they 
used to," he muttered drunkenly to himself.
      Picking up his suitcase, he staggered to the remains 
of a wooden porch that once welcomed visitors to the 
door. He took a long reeling step over the collapsed 
and rotted lower boards and managed to pull himself up 
onto the top platform by clutching the vines that hung 
low from the roof. Stepping up to the door  with a 
resolve born of dwindling funds and distilled spirits 
showing on his face beneath his fading hairline, he 
straightened his clothes, neatened his hair and 
knocked sharply on the door.
      Inside the house the voices faded and the light 
dimmed down low so there was just the palest yellow 
glow emitted from the dust and cobweb covered windows. 
The salesman stood on the porch, completely swallowed 
up by the gloom. He stood there for a minute and then 
he put down his brief case and lit up a cigarette. He 
knocked again. In the dark, the glowing end of his 
smoke betrayed the teeter totter stance of a drunk 
standing straight and "still" as it bobbed around like 
a fire-fly. "I know you're in there," he said to 
himself, "I can hear you being quiet," and he 
snickered drunkenly.
      "Wham! Wham! Wham!" he knocked at the door more 
insistently as the firewater took another, firmer grip 
on his reality. "I'm not leaving until I talk to 
somebody, no I'm not." he said, in a besotted parody 
of a spoiled child. Just then, the light in the house 
flared up bright, not real bright, just bright enough 
so that some of the kudzu vines were illuminated 
weakly outside the window.
   The salesman took a step back as the dilapidated door in 
front of him started to shake and creak as somebody 
opposite him wrestled it from it's drooping, 
misaligned doorway. It finally came loose from it's 
fungus and rust glued frame and was pulled open by a 
thin ragged person silhouetted in the tarnished light 
of what the salesman could now see was an oil lamp set 
on a table in a bleak looking room.
          He leaned closer to the doorway and squinted in 
to get a look at the person holding the door. As he 
did the small ragged figure moved back into the room 
away from him until, in the dim light, he could see 
that it was a very old person. A woman, maybe, with 
grey gnarled arms sticking out from beneath a tattered 
shawl and a face wrinkled like a prune, only with two 
wide eyes staring out at him in curiosity and maybe 
fear. "Whadjawant?" it croaked out at him after he had 
got a look. This knocked him out of his reverie and he 
noticed that he had walked just inside the doorway to 
get a look at her. He quickly stepped out just past 
the threshold and the speech that had passed his lips 
so many times before began to pass through his drunken 
lips like a tape recorded message.
   "Good evening, I've come here today from the Econoshine 
Vacuum and House Cleaning Supply Company,"  he spewed 
out, managing to keep the slurring to a minimum. "I'd 
like to show you the latest in...."
        "NoGiddoutDonwanone," the gnarled woman sprang to 
close the door and just before she got to it something 
pulled her back from the door and flung her to the 
floor. Then before the addled salesman could react, 
another ragged creature thrust itself through the 
doorway and grabbed onto him.
    "Bleeeaaagh," it exhaled nasty rotten breath on him and 
in it's mouth he could see a few remaining yellow 
teeth as his eyes adjusted to the light a little more 
and he saw that the eyes of the poor gnarled thing 
were nothing more than big black holes, spewing forth 
a torrent of blood that ran between the cracks and 
wrinkles of age that made up the whole of the surface 
area of it's face. "Bleeaaargh," the thing screamed 
again and shook it's nasty head, spraying the quickly 
sobering salesman with blood and gore.
      "Oh...Oh...Oh my god!" he screamed in revulsion and 
fell over backwards, half off and on the porch, his 
upper body smashing through what was left of the 
rotted lower steps and the bottle of whiskey in his 
back pocket shattering against a concrete pier sending 
glass shards deep into his right butt cheek. He 
panicked and flailed his arms at the ghastly thing 
that had fell over on top of him and was clutching at 
his shirt and tie, making horrible gasping noises and 
spraying blood with each movement of it's withered 
head. "Aaaagh ! Get off ! Get it off!" he screamed 
hysterically.
       As if in answer to his cries, two dark shapes, 
equally bent and misshapen as the first,  leapt 
through the doorway and pulled the hideous bleeding 
thing off of him. They dragged the pitiful creature 
back though the doorway pausing only to wrestle the 
crooked door back into it's rotted frame before 
leaving the night as silent and still as it was before 
the salesman came calling.
       The panicked salesman removed his arms from where 
they guarded his face and seeing that they had gone, 
thrashed his way off the ground to his feet and ran 
screaming to his car. He got in and sat down, not even 
feeling the broken glass in his seat pocket. He 
started the car and lurched blindly out into the road 
and screamed down the highway, the motor in his little 
car red lined all the way. Toward the lights of the 
small town in front of him he sped, and didn't let his 
foot up off of the pedal until he passed the city 
limit sign and was bathed in the soothing glow of 
street lights. He slowed to a crawl then and began to 
look around for a bar to stop and have a quick one.
        He noticed his reflection in the rearview mirror, 
hit the brakes and pulled over to the side of the 
road. He clicked on his domelight and grabbed onto his 
rearview mirror to turn it  so he could see into it. 
It came off in his hands, though and fell on the 
floor. Cussing, he reached down to grab it and the 
glass in his rearend cut a little deeper. "Ow ! Geezus 
!" he yelled and picked his butt up off the seat and 
held himself up with one hand on the steering wheel as 
he felt around on the floor beneath him. Coming up 
with the mirror, he held it up to his face. Blood 
covered much of it. He looked down at his clothes and 
saw his shirt and pants also were covered in blood. 
Glancing into the mirror again, he was startled to see 
a red glow in his eyes. He looked again and it was 
gone.
           He got out of his car and went back to the 
trunk, opened it and removed a bulging sack from it. 
Walking over to the darkness of a shade tree he 
mumbled to himself, "Dang  dirty clothes, guess 
they'll have to do." He changed his clothes there and 
spent a bit of time with his pants off as he tried to 
pick the glass out of his smarting cheek.  
          After he was done, he was walking over to his car 
and a couple of late night partiers walked by on the 
sidewalk. A man and a woman, arm in arm, smiling, full 
of booze and good cheer. In leather jackets and blue 
jeans, they walked slowly holding each other and 
whispering into each other's ears as they went. When 
they got to the salesman he was opening the door of 
his car and he stopped and watched them go by. The guy 
looked at him as they walked by and said, "Hey ya', 
pard."  He took another quick look back at the tired 
looking guy in the rumpled shirt and tie because he 
could swear there was something funny about his eyes. 
They walked on down the sidewalk and the salesman 
opened his door and slid carefully behind the wheel, 
being extra careful not to sit down too hard.
       He sat there a few seconds and decided to stuff 
something soft under his seat. Gently twisting around 
to rummage in the back seat, he moved a few things 
around and found a pillow he used for sleeping when 
there was no motel or he just didn't have the money. 
As he raised his head up to turn around, he looked 
through the back window and saw the couple who walked 
by out  in the middle of the street  fighting like 
crazy. They were going at each others throats and he 
could hear them yelling. He turned to look out his 
open window and pain from the glass he hadn't 
completely gotten rid of shot through him. He grabbed 
onto the door and stuck his head through the window 
and held his butt off the seat again. 
       Looking down the street to the fight, he saw the guy 
strike the girl a blow on the side of the head and she 
went down. In the next instant she sprang up like an 
angry wildcat and flung herself on him so hard that 
they both fell over into the street. Suddenly, red and 
blue lights flashed past him and a police car went 
speeding toward them.
     The salesman sat slowly down on his seat again and 
started up his car and drove away. He just  stopped 
long enough to go into a bar in the middle of town and 
have a drink and buy a six pack to go. As he motored 
away from the bar down the straight stretch of highway 
toward the aura of lights from the next town in the 
distance, he didn't notice the chair fly out of the 
bar window and extinguish the red and blue neon miller 
high life sign as it went through. He also didn't 
notice the melee of people swinging at each other with 
pool cues and bar stools that spilled out of the front 
door into the street. Neither did he see the bar 
tender take a loaded .44 that he kept under the bar 
for emergencies that never happened and blow away his 
fiancee and five of his loyal patrons.
        
     Dana Scully wanted to do anything but stand in a 
sweltering small southern town and look at a bloody 
crime scene that stretched so far down the main street 
that she and her partner Fox Mulder had to walk around 
in the sun for a half hour just to see all the blood 
stains that seemed to be everywhere. They were on the 
sides of shops, smeared around ornate old style light 
poles and puddled up in the gutters dried to a dull 
brown by the insistent Georgia sun. She feared ruining 
a suit of good clothes with the sweat that had begun 
rolling in large drops from every pore in her body the 
minute she stepped out of the air conditioned car and 
hadn't stopped yet. A bead ran down her back and gave 
her the icky feeling that bugs were under her shirt. 
She squirmed and her sunglasses slipped a little 
farther down her nose. A nice cool morgue sounded good 
to her and she knew if she could just keep from 
screaming a little while longer that it would be her 
next destination.
            A plainclothed southern police detective was 
explaining to them the details of some grisly murders 
as he saw it. " Now this is where we believe Mr. Davis 
repeatedly beat Mr. Carp's head at which point Mr. 
Carp died," he said, pointing at the bloodied and 
dented edge of a public mail box that still had hair 
stuck to it. He stared down at the grisly sight for a 
second and a look of revulsion began to creep over his 
face. Looking up at the two FBI agents he saw what 
seemed to him to be the wide eyed faces of curious 
children staring back at him, not affected a bit by 
the gore beheld by them. " What? Why I....I don't know 
how to do that," he said shaking his head. " I guess 
when you've seen everything..." he trailed off and ran 
a hanky over his reddening forehead.
      " That's all right, detective," said Fox Mulder 
reaching out and touching his shoulder, "We're 
affected, it's just the heat. We don't function 
normally in this kind of weather. Is this the last 
one? Can we go inside for awhile?"
        "Yeah, that's the last of it," he said, looking to 
his left at the crime scene tape that stretched across 
the street a few feet to his left. "Why don't we go 
over to the soda fountain and get something cool?  
There's air conditioning in there," he said, motioning 
back up the street the way they had come, two blocks 
up to the ice cream place just on the other side of 
the yellow crime scene tape that blocked off that end 
of the street.
     They walked back up the street past the blood stains 
and chalk outlines of murdered people on the ground. 
They walked past a police photographer carefully 
taking pictures of all the grisly details and they 
ducked under the yellow crime scene tape and past the 
throng of uniformed policemen and reporters and ducked 
into the cool pink and blue confines of the old 
fashioned ice cream shop.
      "Whew," Said Dana, wiping the sweat from her brow 
with a hanky after she stepped inside. She turned to 
Fox and said, "I'm going into the restroom to freshen 
up."
    "Okay," he said. "We'll be right here."
She turned and walked down to the other end of the room and 
disappeared into a doorway.
Fox and the plainclothed detective seated themselves on 
stools at the counter and a middle aged lady in a pink 
and blue striped skirt with an apron over it and a 
matching hat with a white blouse managed to peel 
herself away from staring out the front window at all 
the commotion, walked behind the bar and said to them 
in her rich southern accent, "What can I get you 
gentlemen ?"
       Fox smiled at her from across the counter and said, 
"I'll have two ice waters, please." Fox looked at the 
detective seated next to him. He was leaning over the 
counter scanning the ice cream displayed in the 
freezer like a school kid. "Umm,... Hmm," he said, a 
big smile on his face. He seemed freshly oblivious to 
the carnage outside. Fox thought back to the revulsion 
he had seen on the detectives face looking at the 
bloodied mailbox and he realized that while he and 
Dana used their cold analytic professionalism to 
supersede the chilling effects of what they saw on the 
job, Detective Kellogg merely used ice cream. Or 
perhaps he was just a big kid. "Uh, yeah. I'll have a 
double scooper of rocky road and pistachio, honey. 
Pistachio on the bottom. Thanks." he said to her.
   "Sugar cone ?" She asked, turning to where the cones are 
kept.
Bigger smile, "You bet," and a wink. She busied herself 
making the treat and Kellogg watched fervently. Fox 
sipped his water.
    "I guess you all are cops, huh?" the waitress said as 
she smooshed the first scoop into the cone.
 "Yep. Georgia State Police." the southern detective said 
proudly.
    "You too?" she said at Fox.
"No ma'am. FBI." said Fox.
         "Oh, really?" she said, impressed. She gave Fox a 
smile. He smiled back. The smile on detective 
Kellogg's face faded proportionally. His thunder 
stolen. Oh, but there was ice cream. His smile quickly 
returned.
    "What happened out there?" she asked, mostly to Fox as 
she smooshed the second scoop onto the other, working 
the scooper  up and down a little to make it stick.
      "Nothing good," Fox said and took a sip of his ice 
water.
"We think there was something of a disagreement early this 
morning. Some kind of fight out on the street," said 
Kellogg. Fox raised an eyebrow to this understatement 
and sipped his water.
   "Well, I'll tell you it sounded like a war going on out 
there," she said handing the cone over. "Not that I 
could sleep anyway what with it being so hot out.
 Fox put down his water. "You heard this last night?"
"Sure, I live right over this shop. I thought it was a bar 
brawl that spilled out into the street. It's happened 
before," she said.
  "You didn't call the police?" asked Mulder.
"No. I knew Bobby Ray would call. He always does if he 
can't stop it himself," she said.
"Bobby Ray?" Said Fox.
"The bartender. We're good friends. I just don't drink that 
much or I might've been there too," she said and she 
glanced behind her and straightened her little striped 
hat in the mirror.  
Just then, Dana walked up and seated herself next to Fox. 
"I didn't think I would ever stop sweating," she said 
to him. "Is this my water?"
"Mmm hmm," acknowledged Fox and he looked back at the 
waitress, "Did you happen to look out your window?"
     "No, not after the noise started. I can't stand to 
watch men fight. They're so stupid, it just makes me 
sick," she said, a little emotion creeping into her 
voice.
     "You said after the noise started, did you look out 
the window before?" asked Fox. Dana sat there drinking 
her water and listening from the stool next to him.
   "Well, honey. Like I said it was hot and I was over at 
the window  getting a little air and went back to bed 
just before the ruckus started," she said and got a 
concentrated look on her face as she thought back. 
"Let's see. Do I remember anything? Oh, yeah. I guess 
just before I went back to bed a car drove off from 
the bar."
      "What kind of a car was it?" asked Fox.
"Well, I don't know. It was sort of a sedan I guess. Small, 
kind of boxy looking. American I think. Might've been 
blue, I couldn't say."
      "Four door, two door ?"
"I really couldn't say. Sorry," she said.
     "That's okay, honey." said Kellogg. "I just happen to 
have a big book in the trunk of my car that has lotsa' 
pictures of cars for you to look at to see if you can 
pick one out. You mind?"
  "Not at all," she said.
Detective Kellogg looked at the two agents seated next to 
him and said, "I just thought I'd bring that book with 
me, it didn't do me any good up in Troy Falls but I 
figured I might save some time if I didn't bring it 
back to the station." 
 Dana looked past Fox at the man and said, "Troy Falls. Was 
that a lot like this is here?"
       "Yeah," he replied, "Strange, a kind of thing like 
this happening at all. Let alone in two towns and this 
close to each other.
      "Three towns," corrected Fox. "This is the third in a 
string of three towns that have had this kind of 
random senseless violence occur in them in the past 
two days.
       "Yeah, I heard about that up there in South 
Carolina, I guess you're right. That's right on the 
same highway. Strange," Kellogg said, his eyes 
glassing up and he turned his head and stared out the 
window toward the crime scene.
  "From what I hear Elmford was the worst one," offered 
Dana. "After what I saw out there, I'm finding that a 
little hard to believe. Can you think of any 
explanation for this kind of thing, Mulder ?"
     "No," Fox said. "But I can tell you there's nothing to 
be served right now by going to the morgue. We know 
those people died violent deaths. I think we need to 
get on the road. If we are going to find any clues to 
this, whatever it may be, I think our best bet is to 
visit those other two towns and sniff around a 
little."
     "Sounds good to me," agreed Dana, even though she had 
been looking forward to the deep coolness of a body 
storage to recover from the outside heat. She turned 
to Kellogg and asked, "Have there been toxicology 
tests on the victims?"
"Yes," he answered, "But they didn't find anything but 
alcohol and, in some, a few of the more common illicit 
drugs. A little pot, some coke. Nothing unusual."
"Okay, will you call us if you find out what kind of car 
that was or anything else ?" said Fox to Kellogg as he 
got up to leave.
    "Sure. I'll walk out with you so I can get the auto ID 
book." He crunched the last of his sugar cone down and 
got up from his stool to follow them outside.
   "We go East out on this main road, right ?" asked Dana 
after they had walked outside.
           Detective Kellogg wiped his mouth and cleared 
his throat before answering. "Ahem, uh, yeah. Just 
straight thata'way," he said gesturing down the road. 
"Oh and y'all be careful of them war reenactors out in 
the woods out there. It's a big month for them and 
they're out there in force just marchin' every which 
way. We've almost had a few accidents. Them boys get 
so caught up in it all, ya'know."
   "Sure, thanks," said Fox and they walked out through and 
past the reporters and police cars to their own 
vehicle. When they got in, Fox started the motor and 
turned on the air conditioning. He pulled out into the 
road and drove east down the highway headed for Troy 
Falls where they would take a grisly tour of the 
savaged downtown and then head on to Elmford S.C. and 
inspect another bad scene. It was late afternoon when 
they finally got back in their car after inspecting 
Elmford. They sat there in silence for a few minutes, 
letting the three grisly scenes they had been witness 
to, after the fact, sink in.
   Finally, Dana said as she fiddled with the controls on 
the air conditioning, "If we go back and stake out the 
next two towns or so down the road from the last town 
this occurred, maybe we'll be able to pick up on 
something tonight." She looked over at Fox. He 
appeared to be deep in thought. "Well?"  she said.
    Fox peeled his eyes away from the small gargoyle on the 
edge of an old stone bank that had 1859, the date it 
was built, carved over the entrance. He looked at Dana 
sitting in the passenger's seat and said, "That sounds 
good, but first I'd like to keep driving East on the 
highway for a while. Just to have a look."
  "Why? We just looked at the last town, what do you think 
you'll find?" Dana said.
"I don't know," replied Fox, "I just think that if 
something concrete were responsible for this, it may 
have originated somewhere other than in town. Just an 
hour or so and then we'll head back for a 
surveillance, like you said."
Dana fixed a serious gaze upon him and asked, "Do you 
really think some instigator is responsible for these 
things happening?"
   "If we go by the belief that there are no coincidences. 
Right now, the department is classifying this as 
random unrelated incidents. I guess that's why we're 
here. To prove it is or isn't," Fox said as he put the 
car in drive and checked his mirror.
"Yeah, but what do you think, Spooky?" Dana said, referring 
to his uncanny ability to think into a subject before 
anybody else has fired a neuron.
Fox gave her a smile and continued, "I don't doubt that an 
outside factor could have. I'm just looking for a 
cause. There's no trace of an occurrence which would 
have set off a lynch mob mentality or any reason 
people may have been spurred to such violence."
   "Then you don't doubt that peaceful people could have 
been set against one another this way," said Dana, 
"But how?"
"Look at World War Two," said Fox. "One man who came into 
power was ultimately responsible for the deaths of 
millions. Not only did he turn his countrymen into 
murderers with his actions but he also did the same to 
the people who defended against him. Look at all wars, 
for that matter."
   "I think that would be covered under self-defense," 
offered Dana. "We're getting off the path, here. This 
was so sudden. There was none of the conditioning or 
propaganda that spurred that kind of violence here," 
said Dana.
"Granted there doesn't seem to be any concrete mind 
controlling devices behind this. I guess you could say 
that is what we're looking for right now. As for self 
defense, When you hunt the monster, be careful you do 
not become the monster," said Fox with a grin.   
      Dana raised her eyes and said, "I'm not even gonna' 
get into this!" She reached over and turned on the 
stereo and surfed the stations until she reached some 
country music and then settled back in her seat. Fox 
looked at her a little funny. "What?" she said.
   "Country and western?" he asked.
"When in Rome..." she shrugged.
They drove along slowly, keeping their eyes peeled for they 
knew not what. The music stopped and the DJ came on 
the radio, "Yeehaw ! That was the beeutiful and 
feenominal voice of LeeAnn Rimes coming at ya' from 
the bitin' mouth of the south. WFSH! The biiig fish. 
Here's one from our "you know you're a southerner 
when... file!" It seems this ole boy from out in 
Keithsburg went fishing out in Cherokee Lake and he 
caught hisself a new lake record big mouth 
bass...Booowomp( sound effect )..which you all know is 
the mascot for this radio station. Well, anyway, this 
here's what the newspaper said the next morning.      
( Ahem ) Bob Cox of Keithsburg was arrested last night 
on River Road by the Georgia State Police while trying 
to cast his fishing pole over a farmers fence from the 
bed of his pickup truck in an attempt to snag a cow. 
When the officers questioned him as to his activity, 
he replied, "I just caught me a record bass today and 
I want to see what it's like to hook into something 
really big." He was arrested for drunk driving and 
harassing livestock. However, he was not cited for 
being nude, which he was because as the police said, " 
There's no law against exposing yourself to cattle." 
Must've been a zen thing.! Hooeee ! you folks up in 
Keithsburg sho' know how to party. MOOOO ( sound 
effect ) COW ON! Yeehaw. Also in the news, we got the 
Big Battle of Chickamauga re-enactment taking place 
this weekend at the Chickamauga Historic Battlesite 
State  Park. If you ever wanted to do this, now is the 
time because the parks department says they could 
always use some more cannon fodder so if yore pappy's 
been sayin' fer some time that what you really need is 
a good butt whoopin', come on up and put on the blue." 
    "Also, ya' know we may have won the battle of 
Chickamauga but I've got news for some of you people 
out there. The South lost the war and we're all, most 
of us down here, comin' around and saying it's a good 
thing. But some of us just aren't getting the message. 
Take for instance the sad case of Cole Hunter, the 
infamous leader of the KKK splinter group, "The White 
Brotherhood", Who says, and I quote, "We don't gotta' 
take no ( bleep ) off'n no ( bleep bleep bleep ) 
darkie for no damn reason. We didn't give a ( bleep ) 
what the federal government said a hunnert and fifty 
years ago and we still don't give a  ( bleep )." 
Unquote. Mr. hunter, please get a life. For you folks 
who wish to avoid bad vibes and prob'ly worse whiskey, 
stay away from the piece of property where Mr. Hunter 
and his group of hate mongers are staging a get 
together. No doubt in hopes of attracting some hate 
monger hopefuls. And, uh Cole, if the KKK kicks you 
out for being too bad, take my advice and go into 
another line of work. Well, while I'm looking through 
the phone book for bodyguards, y'all out there can 
country boogie to some Alan Jackson."
Music splashed out from the dash and the agents continued 
driving slowly from town as the neat houses gave way 
to farmland and, in between that, abandoned properties 
overgrown with trees and kudzu vines.


End (1/5)

Hoodoo (2/5) by K. Turnbull

   At the same time just a few miles down the road the 
other way from the first town they visited, a blue 
Dodge Aries K sedan was parked in the shade under some 
trees along a creek. Inside the car slept a balding 
middle aged man. He slept fitfully, jostling about 
from position to position, his face contorting in 
spasmodic grins of agony and his muscles contracting 
as his hands grasped tight over whatever they found to 
rip and tear at.-ZOOM!- A big rig rumbled past on the 
highway and he opened his eyes and sat upright in his 
seat. Blinking his eyes at the daylight, he sat dazed 
for a minute. A sorry sight, rumpled clothes and hair 
matted with sweat and road dust. He coughed something 
vile from his throat, spat out the window and began 
rummaging through the car.           
   The car seats had tears in the vinyl where he had torn 
at them in his sleep and the floor boards had a thick 
accumulation of trash. He found the bottle he had been 
looking for, took a drink and settled back in the 
reclined front seat and closed his eyes, a look of 
peace finding his face. For a second, and then he 
lifted his lids and fiery red eyes stared out from a 
desperate panic stricken face. He sat up and put the 
bottle to his lips, draining it completely and his 
head hit heavily on the seat as he fell back down and 
crashed fiercely into a vivid dream. 
   He opened his bloodshot eyes in another world as he 
found himself peeking around the corner of a large 
unpainted barn. He knew somehow as you can in a dream 
who he was and where he was even though he wasn't the 
same nor was he any place he had ever been. he was a 
little negro boy dressed in rags and he looked at the 
older slaves as they toiled at their labors in the 
barnyard behind the big main house. Loading and 
unloading various goods from the outbuildings and 
wagons and sweeping and doing other tasks. The boy 
disappeared behind the barn and quietly climbed 
through a window and stole up to a big copper pot 
where grain was fermenting for whiskey. More food than 
he had ever seen, he dipped his hungry hands in and 
ate his fill ignoring the bitter taste of 
fermentation. Wiping his hands clean on his ragged 
clothing, he stumbled into a corner of the barn and 
fell asleep.
      The pain of a sharp kick in the ribs awakened him 
from his sleep and he looked up through bleary eyes to 
see a big bearded white man standing over him and 
laughing a not quite so pleasant laugh. "Ha ha ha." 
The man kicked him again and the boy yelled out and 
jumped to his feet only to topple over from the 
effects of the sour mash.
     "Ha ha ha!" roared the man again and he grabbed the 
boy up by his rags and threw him out the door. "Hey, 
we got us a drunk pickaninny what got in the mash!" he 
yelled out to his two buddies across the yard and they 
stopped supervising the blacks who were loading bales 
onto wagons and walked over to the boy and began 
taunting him.
     The skinny red haired white boy with the bad teeth 
took his hat off and began beating the boy about the 
head with it. "Hey, boy, you been into the mash?" he 
said. "Huh, boy? Hee hah haw! Lookit `im, he c'n 
barely stand." The ragged little boy stumbled to the 
ground and the four men burst out laughing. By now the 
slaves had slowed down their working and begun to 
watch the spectacle through the corners of their eyes.
    "Aaaw ha ha hoo! Hey little ninny, whuts wraong 
wit'choo? Huh?" howled the fat sweaty man as he kicked 
dirt at him while the others laughed.
  Now the bearded man who found him in the barn pulled him 
on to his feet and shouted, "You a drankin' man? Huh? 
Well have a chew drankin' man," he spat a big brown 
wad of plug on top of the boy's head.
    "Haw haw hyuck kyahuu!" they all busted out laughing 
and the boy tried to walk away but he reeled drunkenly 
from side to side and only made it about ten feet 
before he fell on his butt. This started the various 
slaves laughing from the doorways and barnyard. They 
were starting to feel a little relieved that the 
whites weren't doing anything besides teasing the boy 
some.
"Hey Charlie!" the bearded man yelled to a neatly dressed 
house slave watching from a doorway. "Fetch yore 
fiddle. We gon' make `im dayance. You wanta' dayance, 
boy ?" He reached down and picked the boy up by his 
hands and danced him around like a puppet in a circle 
and then swung him around and around in the air. Then 
he set him on his feet and laughed even harder as he 
staggered around in circles. By the time Charlie 
returned with the fiddle the boy was laughing too. 
Charlie began sawing a lively tune and the white men 
started yelling, "Dance, boy, dance !" And the little 
drunk boy giggled and leapt around and fell on his ass 
a lot while the crackers roared with laughter, dancing 
around and kicking up their heels. All the slaves who 
were witness to the spectacle also slapped themselves 
on the knees, their eyes bugging out with mirth.
  Behind them all from the main house a man walked out and 
toward the impromptu party. As he passed the slaves 
and came into their views, one by one they shut up and 
nervously went back to their tasks. His tall square 
shouldered frame carried a long face with mean eyes, 
deeply lined cheeks with a nose too small and a jaw 
too long. His thin lips and leathery complexion 
betrayed no benevolence as he neared the laughing 
group, oblivious of his arrival. He walked into their 
midst and all sound ceased except for the giggling of 
the intoxicated boy still dancing in circles to 
nonexistent music.
  "What's this?" he snarled. If he had been prone to any 
merriment at all, all hope of it ended with the 
reactions of the men who had been exposed to his 
sullen temper in the past. The three whites stared 
dumbly down at their feet and the houseman with the 
fiddle retreated slowly backwards toward the house.
"He got inta' the mash, Pa!" said the man with the beard.
The old man snarled down at the boy. "So you're drunk, huh 
?" he said with venom and the boy stopped his 
cavorting and fell down and stared up at him 
unsuredly.
"Yep," the bearded man said, seeing that his Pa had not 
reacted in a physical manner already to this news, he 
thought perhaps he wasn't his usual nasty self after 
all. "We had Ol' Charlie kick up a tune on his fiddle 
and had that ninny dancin' like a game chicken."
    "That  so?" said the old man, his evil grimace catching 
the hint of a smile.
"Yep," said the fat guy cracking a wide grin. "He was going 
a mile a minute."
The evil looking man glared down at the boy again and 
started to laugh. A thick phlegmy laugh that croaked 
and grated from nonuse. The other whites started to 
laugh and the slaves looked up from their chores with 
anxious looks of half relief and then the boy, not yet 
wise enough to sense his predicament began to giggle 
and smile again.
Suddenly the old man stopped laughing and reached down 
quickly and yanked the little boy up off the ground by 
one arm. The small boy instantly began to cry from the 
pain of it and the old man leered into his watery 
face. "I'll teach you to steal my mash," he snarled 
and dragged the boy across the dirt into the mash 
barn. The cries emanating out of the barn from the 
boy's savage beating sent the yard negroes to crying 
and the house slaves retreated far inside their 
building so as not to hear. The three white men looked 
at each other blankly and went back to their work.
Out by the highway in the hot Georgia afternoon, screams 
resounded from a little blue car parked in the shade 
under some big trees. Inside it, arms and legs flailed 
trash and pieces of seat material into the air and a 
leg went through the drivers side window just before 
the door opened and a sweating panic of a man fell out 
onto the dusty searing ground and lay there weeping 
and gasping like a child after the worst beating of 
his life, so far.
 
Fox Mulder and Dana Scully hadn't gone down the road too 
far before the scenery was nothing more than large 
trees and kudzu vines. They drove along slowly, 
observing the overgrown ruins of cannibalized 
plantations and cropsharer's huts. Nothing moved in 
the late afternoon heat except swarms of bugs that 
filled the air with a steady humming and buzzing 
sound.
Scully looked over at Mulder who was driving and said, "It 
doesn't look like there is anything out here, Mulder. 
Just a lot of ruins and these vines that seem to be 
growing over everything." She looked out the window in 
amazement at the jungle like foliage.
"That's kudzu vine," said Mulder. "It's an import from the 
orient and that's what happens when it isn't 
controlled. I've heard that it grows so fast that 
mothers have to close their  windows at night so it 
won't creep in and strangle their sleeping babies."
Dana raised her eyebrows. "Sounds like a lot of kudzu to 
me," she said. Fox chuckled from behind the steering 
wheel. Then he quickly turned his head to look at 
something he had passed and pulled the car to the side 
of the road and backed up slowly a ways and parked on 
the shoulder. He stared out the window at a vine 
covered shack across the road.
"What's that?" asked Dana, leaning forward and looking past 
him.
" A house."
"That's not a house," said Dana. "That's just a hole in the 
vines."
"Evil grows in cracks and holes," said Fox ominously.
"Oh yeah! Right. And lives in peoples minds?" guffawed 
Dana.
Fox opened the car door and stepped halfway out. He looked 
back at Dana and said, "You got it girl. You go !"
"Oh, please," said Scully and settled back in her seat.
"I'll just be a minute," said Fox and he closed the door 
and walked across the road to the weedy path and along 
it up to the broken down porch. As he stood there and 
surveyed the scene he saw the broken off top of a 
Kessler's bottle with the plastic cap still on it. The 
freshly splintered wood of the porch railing on the 
ground carried his eye past it to the innumerable tiny 
drops of blood. He stepped up onto the porch and it 
creaked under his steps as he went to the window and 
peered in. Seeing nothing in the gloom, he decided to 
try the door. It opened hard and he stuck his head in 
and squinted into the dim light. "Hello ?" he called, 
"Is anybody here ?" No answer. He headed in and looked 
into the corners and checked the sorry old chairs for 
dust. Less on the chair seats than in the rest of the 
room. "Is anybody there ?" he yelled again. This time 
down the only hallway , opposite the front door. 
Plunging into the gloom, he checked into each room 
until he reached the third and last. Looking in 
through the doorless entry, he saw three of the oldest 
looking black women he had ever seen. They were 
sitting on chairs side by side and two of them looked 
up at him curiously while the third, in the middle, 
looked down at the floor, her face hidden from Fox.
He stood in the doorway a moment, soaking up the strange 
sight. When his eyes adjusted to the dingey yellow 
light filtering in through the dust covered window 
behind the trio, he saw that on the ground in front of 
them was a little altar with a cross and some candles 
that had burned down to their wooden holders. They had 
their hands clasped in prayer over their knees. 
Obviously, their aged legs couldn't take the strain of 
kneeling and this was their solution. "Hello," he 
said, still standing in the doorway.
"Hello," Croaked the crone on his right. She continued 
staring at him along with the other.
"Ahem, I'm, uh, Agent Mulder. I'm with the FBI. I was 
wondering if you, um, ladies could maybe help shed 
some light on a little problem we're having ?"
The two old women looked at each other and began babbling 
loudly between themselves in a language so thickly 
accented and twisted by time and isolation that it 
could only be understood by themselves. As Fox 
listened it sounded to him like birds chattering. The 
noise stirred the middle woman, who woke from her 
praying with a grunting sound and lifted her head up 
to see what was going on around her. When she did, 
though, it was to no avail because where her eyes had 
been were two hollow black holes encrusted with dried 
blood. Fox gasped and stepped back. Seeing that their 
sister had shown herself, the two sighted women 
stopped their yammering and threw a piece of cloth 
over her head to hide her.
 Fox walked quickly out of the house and into the heat. He 
crossed the road and rapped on the car window. Dana 
was inside, her seat reclined, the motor running for 
the air conditioning. When she opened her eyes, Fox 
motioned for her to come outside. She rolled down the 
window a crack so as to not let all the cold air 
escape. "What is it, Fox?" she asked, "I'm trying to 
get some sleep before our surveillance tonight."
"I think I found something, Scully! Really!" he said 
excitedly, "Come out and bring your doctor's bag." 
Scully left the air conditioned car reluctantly and 
after retrieving her bag from the trunk followed Fox 
into the dusty house.
In the room with the old women, Scully took one look at the 
eyeless one and knelt down on the floor and began 
examining her. "Mulder, this woman has had her eyes 
cut out," she said and opened up her doctors bag to 
remove some cotton swabs and a small bottle.
"I can see that," said Fox.
"Scully began swabbing away the blood on the old woman's 
face and eyes. The old woman just sat there numbly, 
hardly taking notice. "How could this have happened?" 
said Scully to Mulder.
"Maybe one of you ladies could tell us that?" Fox addressed 
the old women. They began to whimper and shake. The 
one to the right hid her face in her hands and the one 
to the left met Fox with a steely gaze and lifted both 
of her hands to reveal long yellow fish gutting 
fingernails on her thumbs.
"It had to be done," she said strongly. Dana drew back in 
revulsion at the realization that the thumbnails had 
done the cutting. This did not escape the old woman 
and seeing she had somebody's attention she fixed her 
gaze anew upon Dana and continued her explanation. 
"Lord knows we didn't want to, if we hadn't..." her 
voice trailed off and the strength seemed to fade from 
her. "Aaaiiee!" she screamed, lifting her gnarled gray 
fists clenched above her head and looking at them. "It 
did..It did anyways! It got away." She continued 
screaming as if some terrible realization had come 
over her and then opened her hands and dropped them 
over her eyes and rocked back and forth in her chair 
making pitiful sobbing sounds.
Mulder and Scully looked at each other and Mulder motioned 
Scully out into the hall. In the hall, Scully said, 
"Is this making any sense to you ?"
Mulder thought about it for a moment. "Well, she said 
something "Got away"? What could she mean? And why 
would they need to cut the other woman's eyes out ?"
"Yeah, what purpose would that serve ?" mused Scully. "Do 
you think she used her thumbnails for that? Oh, that's 
too much!"
"It looks that way." Said Mulder. The sounds from the room 
ceased and the agents heard a voice say, "They gone?" 
The agents peeked around the corner and they saw the 
two sighted women inspecting the face of the other. 
"It's okay, they gone." One said.
"No we're not," said Fox from the doorway. "And we're not 
leaving until you tell us why this happened."
The old woman who spoke before sat back in her chair. "I 
gase Ahm gon' hafta' then, s'pose," she said wearily. 
"Don' make no mattern naow. Caint hart whatns alraidy 
daid anyhaow.Nhea hye hyee," she laughed ironically 
and looked over to the other who looked back with a 
scared look in her eyes. "Ah doanow haow long it's 
been," She began and looked back up at the agents who 
were surprised she volunteered so easily. "But ah 
knows ets ben a mighty mighty loang tahm. We was jest 
etty betty garls ya see, et warnt none a our fault, no 
sir.
"Amen," chimed in the other with a tired and warped voice.
"Yeah, whane dat gout inta we'ns we dint have no chance, no 
chance at all." She shook her head as she talked, a 
far away look was in her eyes. "The thang we been 
holdin' all `dese yeha's stole ourn lahvs `way fum us, 
made us hav'n ta' hahd in ol' shacks nobody done 
wanted no mo'. `Allus mo' ampty houses `round too. 
Don' n'body stay `roun us'ns too long."
"What sort of thing are you talking about?" Asked Dana in a 
soft voice, sensing the amount of pain the woman had 
endured in her long life.
"Oh, honey. No. Don' make me tell you. It's been so long 
since I seed a face such as your'ns, so young, with 
skin so soft and eyes so `live. I'm feared. I'm feared 
if'n ah tell you, you'll turn as old as us heah an' 
your perty sparklin eyes'll turn as dead as our'n." 
The old woman said shaking her head as second thoughts 
about the whole thing came over her.
"That's okay, sweetie. We can take care of ourselves. We 
have to know so we find whatever it is before anything 
happens," Dana said as if she was talking to a child.
"The old woman looked up at Dana with wonder in her eyes. 
"Can ya' fer reals ? Can ya' do sumpin'?"
Dana gave Fox a quick glance and he raised a questioning 
eyebrow at her. She turned back to the withered old 
woman and said, "Of course we can, that's why we're 
here." Afterward she knelt down in front of the middle 
woman and began bandaging her eyes.
""Kay den, honey, ah'll try," the old woman said. "Ah'll 
tra'." She sat there for a minute with her eyes closed 
before she started to speak again. " Whan we three 
were very young, there was a slave named Jibus and..."
Dana cut in here and said, "You mean an ex-slave? He used 
to be a slave?"
    "Oh, he were a slave alla' his lahf ceppin' fer about 
two minnitts and `den he was a' kilt. See, when da' 
end a' da' war came he dayanced and yaelled and Massah 
Hunta who was a very mean massah heard. He stepped out 
onta' da' poach an' boom, jest shoot `im down and 
afta' beatin' an' h'rassin' an' whippin' on `dat po' 
nigga' nigh evvy day o' hisn's wretched lahf. An' us 
t'ree sista's was justa' stannin' aroun' anna' 
watchin' alla' dis a' hap'nin `cause we come out ta' 
see what alla' da' yellin' was abou' whan da man he 
came a' rahdin' troo on his hoss' a' yellin' `bout da' 
war bein' over an' all." The old woman paused to catch 
her breath. She looked more tired and ashen than she 
had before, as if telling the story was a great strain 
upon her. From her chair she looked up at Dana and Fox 
and the sight of their youthful faces seemed to give 
her strength and she drew in a deep breath and lowered 
her head and her eyes set straight and hard like a man 
digging through rock. "As he lay dyin' on da' groun',"  
Suddenly she raised her voice and looked back up at 
the two agents with wonder and fear in her voice. "A 
terr'ble thang happent. An evil hoodoo spirit that 
looked lahk a big dark bat sprung outta' da' roots of 
an old willa' tree." She switched her dark steely gaze 
onto Fox and continued, louder and more animatedly, " 
`Tracted by his hate and vengefulness, it was. An' it 
clamped onta' his soul an' took it fer it's own, 
denyin' that poor slave, Jibus, his rightful place in 
heaven `fer all the suff'rin' he put up with in `is 
short cursed life. But it had no body so's it jumped 
inta' us three little garls seemin' as three's a magic 
number, we foun' out latah on, an' we bein' young and 
weak an' not able ta' p'tect ourselves fum it's evil 
doin's."
She looked straight ahead again and said, "We done tol' our 
momma what happen't and she got a hoodoo doctor 
ta'come an' look at us an' he filt us fulla' potions 
an' danced taroun' usn's but he couldn't get ridda' 
da' thang. He say it cuzza' da' soul a' da' slave 
havin' been thru so much that it was too strong. So 
instead he tol' us an momma how we got ta' live away 
from peoples so's it couldna' work it's evil on `em. 
An' we done that an' thought we'd die a' old age but 
it didn't let us die. Ever'body else, but not us an' 
we jest sit here a' waitin' ta' die an eat'n da' nasty 
litttle beans a' growin' on `da vines over the house. 
But we ain't died yet." She paused here with an empty 
stare in her eyes.
Fox took a step closer to her and asked, "How did the, uh, 
hoodoo get loose?"
   The old woman looked over to her sister whose eyes Dana 
had bandaged and motioned toward her. "Most times it 
was strongest in Annie an' we jest made sure she 
didn't go an git herse'f hurt or sumpin'. But one 
night she went crazy tryin' ta' git outta' da' house 
an' we didn't think we had da' strenth to hold her 
much longer. So we cut her eyes out so'sn da' hoodoo 
couldna' see through `em no mo'. Didn'a wanna but 
hadda', dat shoulda' been da' end of it but dis dang 
fool came to da' door an tried ta' sell us sumpin'." 
"A salesman?" said Fox wide eyed.
     "Ayup. He ain't no mo' tho' the hoodoos got `im naow," 
she said, waving her arm in the air with finality.
The agents looked at each other and Dana said, " A 
salesman!?"
   "What was he selling?" asked Fox.
"I dunno', some dang fool thang," she said.
"Can you remember for us?" asked Dana.
"Some kinda' cleanin' sumpin er other." he old woman 
replied.
"A vacuum cleaner?" Asked Dana.
"Vac...vac..coom? Uh, mebbee dat's it." she said.
"Did you see what he was driving?" asked Fox.
"Naw." she said.
"Can you tell us what he looked like ?" he asked.
She thought about it for a second, " White boy, that all."
Dana grabbed Fox's arm and said, " Uh, Fox, let's step 
outside."
Out in the hall Dana turned to Fox and said, " Well ?"
"Well, what ?" said Fox.
"Well, umm." Dana thought for a second, surprised that 
Mulder hadn't anything to say about a strange 
situation for once. She continued, " What do we do 
with them ? What do we tell anyone that asks and how 
are we supposed to catch this thing ?" She paused for 
a second and added, "Do you believe they're really 
that old ?"
Fox's eyes strayed toward the doorway for a second. He 
looked back at Dana and said, "They sure look that 
old. I think we should just leave them there, if 
they're over 140 years old I don't think they're going 
to want to be doing any traveling. We do know what to 
look for now, but let's not tell anyone. Let's just 
say we're looking for a potential witness. As for 
catching it, your guess is as good as mine. If you 
believe it, that is." Fox gazed searchingly into 
Dana's eyes and said, "Do you believe, Scully ?"
Scully shrugged, "Hey! Why not ?"
"Are you done bandaging Annie ?"
"Good and tight," said Scully. "I've got some trail mix and 
water in the car, I think I'll give it to them." She 
turned and headed out to the car.
"That's nice." Fox said as he watched her go and then he 
went back into the room and looked at the three 
pitiful sisters praying at their equally pitiful 
little altar. "We're going to leave now," he said, "We 
don't know when we'll be back. Is there anything you 
want when we do ?"
The sister who speaks said, "We'uns could use some food, 
mebbe. sumpin' thet ain't beans. Poke mebbe. Mebbe 
chitlins, we had nuttin' lahk thet in a good long 
while. Sugar. We want us some sugar, too. Sumpin' ta' 
let us dah happy."
"Okay," said Fox with a smile.
The old women looked at him in disbelief. "Really ?" said 
the sighted one who had not spoken but for a single  
"amen."
"Uh Huh," replied Fox.
Dana walked in and left a bottle of water and a bag of 
trail mix by the door. "This is for you to share," she 
said to them. "Ready ?" she said to Fox.
"Yes," said Fox and as they turned to leave the old woman 
spoke again. 
 "If you meet up with it," she said, "You best check the 
evil in yo'se'f." Fox and Dana turned and looked at 
her.  "Thass raht!" she warned. "It the hate you hold 
inside you and da' feyar, too that drags ya' unda' 
wit' it and meks ya' it's own!" She stopped and put 
her head down to pray and the two agents left the 
room. They walked out to the car, observing anew the 
wreckage of the porch rail and the broken bottle and 
in their mind's eye their perceptions of a scene that 
had taken place there played out. Fox took a plastic 
bag out of his pocket and placed the bottleneck and 
some pieces of glass into it as Dana searched around 
for any other clues.
After a short but thorough search of the area Fox said, 
"Find anything else?"
"No," said Dana stepping out of some tall weeds along the 
path.
"Well, let's get going then," said Fox.
"Same plan?" said Scully as they walked across the sleepy 
highway to their car.
"Same plan," Affirmed Mulder. "Split up and stake out."

End (2/5)

Hoodoo (3/5) by K. Turnbull

Night had long since fallen and the wee hours of the 
morning had begun their progression when Dana Scully 
again had the feeling that she had wasted her efforts. 
Not that her efforts had been anything more than 
sitting in a bus stop and peering out at the comings 
and goings of the local night life on the main drag of 
a small sleepy Georgia town. She looked at her 
wristwatch to confirm that the dull ache in her sitter 
that was slowly creeping down her legs was from time 
elapsed and not from some undiagnosed illness before 
she stood up and stretched her legs while bracing 
herself on the aluminum frame of the Plexiglas walls 
of the bus stop. After she was done she leaned against  
the entrance framing and looking out  at the street, 
called Fox on her cell phone. "Hi, it's me," she said 
into it.
"Hi, Dana. Seen anything ?" said Fox Mulder into his phone 
as he sat behind the wheel of his parked car and kept 
his eyes peeled down a darkened street lined with 
aging brick warehouses. The only sign of life 
confronting his eyes being the neon Stroh's beer sign 
glowing out from the window  next to the front door of  
"The Loading Dock" bar that seemed to have been built 
into the alleyway between the two ancient buildings 
that loomed over it. 
"No, nothing yet," she replied.
"Yeah, me neither," he said and laughed quietly.
"What's so funny ?" Dana asked.
"Oh, nothing," he said. "It's just the thought of staking 
out a rogue vacuum cleaner salesman."
"Yeah, really," she replied. "Well, if there's nothing new, 
I'll get off the phone. Have to conserve the battery. 
I don't have a car to plug mine into."
"Hey, you've got to quit losing those coin tosses," said 
Mulder cheerily.
"Fine," she said, "Goodbye."
"Over and out," said Fox on the other end.
Dana folded her phone and as she put it back in her pocket 
she said to herself, "Over and out ?" She began doing 
deep knee bends as she watched the street. Halfway 
down her third time, an old rusty early fifties Chevy 
pickup puttered up the street and parked in front of 
Billy Bob's Honky Tonk and Barbecue alongside some 
other cars and trucks. Two men, a couple of hairy 
sixties refugee types in t-shirts and jeans got out 
and went into Billy Bob's. Dana watched them go in and 
she glanced across the street to the left at the other 
bar which was more of a dive than the other one. A 
wooden sign was tacked above it's door that read, 
"Bloxton Tavern," and the door was propped wide open 
with a stool. 
Dana continued her exercises for a while before sitting 
back down on the bench and resumed her watch into the 
night.
A car backfired on the highway as it went by and Dana 
Scully opened her eyes and looked around. She 
instantly realized where she was and that she had 
fallen asleep. A dangerous thing for an agent to do 
especially in the open, not in a vehicle or without 
backup. She felt inside her clothes for her weapon, 
wallet and phone. They were all there. She let out a 
sigh of relief that she didn't have to go through the 
humiliation of explaining to her superiors that she 
had been rolled like a drunk. She looked out at the 
street and got up to stretch her legs. Looking down 
the street, she saw that Billy Bob's was dark. Closed 
for the night. Maybe, she thought, she could end her 
vigil and check into a hotel for some real sleep. But 
no, she looked to her left to see the light coming 
through the still propped open door of the Bloxton 
Tavern. The faint smell of tobacco wafted down the 
street toward her from it, accompanied by the sound of 
Lynyrd Skynyrd drifting out from the juke box. 
Dana lifted her forearm to look at  her watch and saw that 
it was one-thirty in the morning. she knew the other 
bar would be closing soon. "If something's going to 
happen, it had better happen now!" she said to herself 
as her eyes searched the night for forms that might 
turn out to be something more than shadows. She closed 
her eyes for a second and breathed deep in through her 
nose. The night was thick with the smell of flowers on 
trees and in yards and Dana took the opportunity to 
savor the sweet perfume as it hung heavy in the moist 
Southern air.
A sound in front of her made her jerk her eyes open. She 
looked to see the two long-haired sixties looking guys 
who she had seen earlier go into Billy Bob's spill out 
onto the street from the Bloxton Tavern. They were 
really going at it fists and feet. She glanced over at 
Billy Bob's and saw the old Chevy still in the 
darkened parking lot. Dana darted out from her lookout 
thinking to go stop them when she realized what had 
awakened her from her accidental slumber was the sound 
of a car backfiring as it went out of town past her to 
the North. The way the hoodoo would have headed. She 
was suddenly very wary and alert to the possible 
danger of the situation.
Instead of trying to break the men up, who looked pretty 
evenly matched, she figured she had time to check out 
the bar. She drew her pistol and ducked cautiously 
into the bar. Inside, she found it empty except for 
the bartender, unconscious, draped over the bar as if 
he had been pulled there by his assailant. Blood 
dripped slowly from a wound under his hair. She felt 
his neck for a pulse and then for any possible 
vertebral injury. She found no apparent injury so she 
took a chance and repositioned him a little getting 
his throat off the edge of the bar so he couldn't 
choke. She looked over the bar for anyone who might be 
hiding there and then she reached across it and got 
the phone. She dialed 911 and when the dispatcher 
picked it up, Dana said, simply, "This is FBI agent 
Dana Scully. I'm at the Bloxton tavern, I need an 
ambulance and the police. Make it quick, I have to 
go." She hung up the phone and called Fox on her 
cellular as she walked cautiously to look out the door 
at the two combatants in the street. "Fox ?" she said 
into the phone, "I'm not sure, but I think we may be 
having an incident here, right now.
>>From the other end, Fox asked, "Should I head over ?"
"No," Dana answered, "If I'm right, the man we're looking 
for should be headed your way. I've got to go try to 
keep two people from killing themselves right now," 
she added.
"Okay, but Dana, be very careful," he warned, "You saw the 
other places, don't  let it happen to you."
"Ten-Four," she said and hung up. On her way out the door 
she momentarily flashed on Fox musing over her "10-4" 
as she had on his "over and out". She raised her 
weapon and advanced out the door toward the two men 
fighting. Fifteen feet from them she stopped and 
barked out the order, "Freeze! Stop fighting. Now!" 
The men just ignored her, they were quite bloody by 
now and they had each other by their long hair and 
beards and were kicking and swearing at each other. As 
Dana was about to yell again, they got their legs 
tangled and fell over into a snarling mass of curses 
on the pavement. Scully crept a little closer as one 
pinned the other and began gouging with his thumbs 
into his eye sockets. Scully hit him on the side of 
his head with the butt of her gun and he groaned and 
fell over onto his back.
Scully jumped back away from the two and pointing her 
weapon at them again barked, "Freeze, that's enough!"  
The two men got back on their feet as a siren wailed 
and red and blue flashing lights began to appear from 
down the street.
"Freakin' Pig!" The two bloodied hippies seemed to say in 
unison as they charged at Scully with their hate 
distorted faces, their energies focused anew.
"No!" Scully screamed in panic at this sudden onslaught and 
managed to take a step back before they smashed into 
her. As she fell backward, she fired her pistol 
blindly before her head hit the pavement and she 
blacked out.

Fox Mulder got out of his car after Dana called and walked 
over to the bar he had been staking out all night. He 
opened the front door slightly and he stood there a 
few seconds looking in. From there, he could see the 
length of the bar and most of the tables. At one of 
the tables three men played a solemn game of poker as 
they smoked cigars and nursed their beer. Fox went 
inside and saw that nobody else was in the place. He 
walked up to the three men and introduced himself as 
an FBI agent. 
"So whatta' you want?" the stumpy guy with the apron, who 
must have been the bartender said to him. The others 
just glanced up at him briefly before going back to 
looking at their cards.
"I'm in the process of apprehending a suspect and I expect 
him to be passing by here soon," said Fox. "I'd really 
appreciate it if you could close up your bar and not 
let anybody else in for the night."
The apronned man looked past Fox out the window to the 
deserted street. "What about all my customers?" he 
said mockingly. His poker buddies hid their grins 
behind their fanned out decks of cards.
Fox looked up at the clock on the wall next to the sign 
that had a picture of a smiling alligator's head on it 
with the words, "One armed alligator baiters would 
like to do it quicker but they can't." Fox looked back 
at the man and said, "The state would be glad to pay 
you for your lost revenue, sir." And he pulled out his 
wallet.
The bartender looked surprised and he looked at his buddies 
and said, "Well, allrighty. Now you're talkin' my 
language," and he rubbed his hands together and smiled 
a greedy smile.
"Okay," Fox said with a straight face as he fished in the 
bottom of his wallet. "In these situations I've been 
empowered by the Bureau to assess the amount 
compensated. Are you boy's planning on staying here 
after he locks up and play poker still?" Said Fox to 
the poker buddies.
"Damn straight!" said the one on the right with the fishin' 
lure hat and safari shirt.
"Uh huh," acknowledged the man to his left.
"Well then, I won't be needin' to compensate for you two," 
said Fox with a sly grin.
"Dad gum it!" said the bartender and swatted at the two of 
them with his clerk's visor.
"And judging from the rate of foot traffic," Fox said, 
scraping in his wallet with his fingernail, "I owe you 
this." He dropped a little ball of lint in the hands 
of the apronned man and his face turned red as he 
choked on his anger. His poker buddies busted out 
laughing and the one with the fishing hat fell 
backwards in his chair and as he hit the floor the 
ashes from the cigar in his hand sent up a hail of 
sparks.
Fox turned and walked toward the door and as he opened it 
to leave he turned and said, "Remember, don't open the 
door for anyone," and he gave the red-faced man a look 
that said he meant business. As he stepped back into 
the night, Fox's pace quickened and his eyes searched 
for a high spot to get a good vantage point on the 
highway. Just buildings, so instead, he got in his car 
and drove to the SouthWest edge of town and waited 
there.
After a while he saw a lone pair of headlights coming 
toward him. He watched as they drew nearer and before 
they got to him, he crouched down in his seat and 
looked through the steering wheel as the car went 
past. Through his open window he heard country music 
blaring out from it. Fox reached over and turned the 
radio on after it had passed and the same song came 
out of his speakers. He watched in his rearview mirror 
as the car went around the slight curve where the bar 
is and then he hit his headlights and gunned out into 
the road to follow. After he went around the curve he 
saw the taillights going out of town ahead of him.
Fox continued following the car from a safe distance and he 
listened to the radio as he went figuring that might 
put him on the same wavelength, so to speak, as the 
man in the car. When the music stopped, this time, the 
DJ  speaking was a woman, "Hey all you late night 
music fans, this here's Jenny Jenkins and I'll keep 
bringin' you your music fix all through the night 
until the sun comes up on KFSH, the big fish. But 
right now it's time to pay your dues with some news 
and the first thing I've just gotta' tell you sheet 
keekers out there is it's not cow fishing season. Ever 
since we ran the story about the good ol' boy who 
wanted to hook something bigger than a bass, namely 
cattle, it's been reported that soon after dark 
tonight several instances of suspected bovine angling 
have occurred. One rancher says that he went to check 
on his cattle shortly after ten o clock tonight after 
hearing his dogs barking and he found five fishing 
lures with the lines broken off of them embedded in 
the sides of several of his prize steers. Boy, ya 
know, somebody comes up with a new idea....In other 
regional stories of note, the battle of Chickamauga 
re-enactment is still slated for this Saturday. It 
just goes to show that men are such little boys, 
doesn't it? Speaking of men acting like little boys, 
the State Government today said it couldn't bar the 
gathering of Cole Hunters hate group, The White 
Brotherhood from having what they call a picnic but 
what we all know is actually a hate-fest on some 
private property that coincidentally is just on the 
other side of the road from, and on the same day as 
the Chickamauga re-enactment."
As Fox drove and listened to the radio, he kept his eyes on 
the taillights of the car in front of him. At one 
point as the news played the little red lights weaved 
all over the road and nearly went into the ditch. Then 
it straightened up and continued down the highway with 
Fox watching curiously as it went.
The DJ continued, "The NAACP and several hatewatch groups 
asked the governor of Georgia if he could somehow 
legally put a halt to the gathering of what looks like 
might be several hundred members of various white 
power groups and their families. The gathering, 
organized by the infamous KKK splinter group leader, 
Cole Hunter....." Fox gritted his teeth at the sudden 
violent jerking of the car in front of him..... "who 
claims the gathering is merely to introduce white 
people from different walks of life to each other, 
talk ideology and have a few beers. However, Sunbelt 
HateWatch, who has been monitoring....." The car 
weaved from shoulder to shoulder wildly..... "the 
White Brotherhood since it's conception in 1992...." 
The little cars brake lights shone bright and it spun 
around dangerously before coming to a stop on the left 
shoulder, it's headlights shining out over the road 
toward Fox as he closed in..... "Says they are quite 
possibly the most dangerous organization to spring 
from the Southland's sordid background of racial 
intolerance since the Klan of the Twenties and 
Thirties and their picnic is nothing more than a 
thinly disguised recruitment drive. O-o-o-okay, as if 
that ain't bad enough, two instances of what the 
Georgia State Police are calling, "Random outbreaks of 
violence," have happened in small towns in Eastern 
Georgia. Apparently very similar to another instance 
in South Caroli....Click" 
Fox shut off the radio and slowed to a crawl as he drove 
past the car stuck on the shoulder. The driver was 
leaning over the steering wheel, looking out the 
windshield, wide-eyed with his hands clenched tightly 
on it. As Fox slowly drove past, the man in the car 
turned his head and followed Fox with his eyes. as he 
did, Fox saw his pale white face and just as he 
passed, Fox saw his eyes glow red.
"Whoa!" said Fox to himself and he looked back over his 
shoulder to get another look. He pulled to one side of 
the road to make a U-turn but instead found himself 
parked on the shoulder and he sat there with his hands 
on the steering wheel staring blankly out into space. 
A tear rolled down his cheek and then another, "Why ?" 
he cried out into the blackness surrounding his 
headlight beams. He started to sob and pound his head 
slowly against the steering wheel. "Why? Why? Why?" he 
wailed again.
"Knock, knock, knock!" Someone knocked on the side window. 
Fox looked up to see a Georgia State Trooper peering 
in.
"Sir? Are you all right, sir?" he asked, shining a 
flashlight into his face.
Fox looked up at the officer and waved his hand at him as 
if he didn't want the light in his eyes. Then he laid 
his head back down on the steering wheel.
The trooper, thinking that perhaps Fox was winding down 
from a near accident decided to leave him there and go 
check on the other car. As Fox leaned against the 
steering wheel of the car, he was lost in the turmoil 
of his thoughts. Anger inducing images from his life 
flashed in and out of his mind like he was channel 
surfing. He saw his father in there and the men who 
probably killed him and went about controlling his 
life and perhaps manipulating every aspect of his life 
for their possible gain. He wanted to reach out and 
strangle them and he saw his sister and in his 
greatest sorrow he found his greatest anger and his 
hands wrung the steering wheel and began to twist and 
bend it like a cheap plastic toy.
Behind him on the road, the trooper walked away from the 
little blue sedan toward his patrol car. He stopped 
for a second before he had hardly even started and 
then staggered up and stopped on the center line of 
the road, across from Fox's car. He stared at it with 
a look of dumb confusion. The confused look was 
suddenly replaced by  an intense look of hate and 
revulsion and as he stared through the window at Fox 
grappling with his steering wheel, he drew his sidearm 
and walked slowly toward the car blasting methodically 
into the window.
Fox's head came within an inch of having a nine-millimeter 
slug become a permanent fixture in it. This seemed to 
knock Fox out of his hallucinations and in an instant 
he evaluated the situation and managed to crouch on 
his side with his foot on the door and his arm reached 
out with his hand on the door latch. As the shots rang 
out closer to him, he looked up through the shattered 
window and when he saw the face of his attacker 
advance close to the door he pulled the latch and 
kicked the door open with all his might.
The addled officer fired one last round that went up 
through the roof of the car as he fell hard on his 
back. At the same time, Fox opened the passenger side 
door and crawled out so fast it was more like a dive. 
He rolled into the ditch and drew his weapon. As he 
crept up to look across the hood of his car he 
searched his mind for who might be shooting at him but 
after his fit of anger in the car he couldn't really 
remember where he was at. From over the hood of the 
car he could see the uniformed trooper on his back in 
the roadway. "What the hell?" Fox said to himself as 
he swiveled his head from left and right to look for 
any other assailants.
Seeing no one, his eyes went  back to the man in the road 
illumined by the headlights of the troopers car. A few 
feet from him across the yellow line Fox could see an 
automatic service pistol casting a long shadow in the 
road behind the course of the headlight beam. 
Suddenly, Fox saw the officer's head turn toward the 
gun. "Freeze!" Fox ordered loudly, drawing down on the 
trooper. He froze. A second after that the blue car on 
the shoulder began spinning it's tires in an attempt 
to free itself from the soft dirt.
"Aaaaargh!" The trooper sprang up at Fox screaming, a 
maniacal look in his eyes. In the few seconds he had 
to get his head straight, Fox remembered where he was 
and that the trooper had been affected by the salesman 
just as he had been. He knew the danger he was in and 
weighed it with the amount of force he wished to use 
on the innocent yet extremely violent man hurtling 
toward him. Fox sidestepped the man and took a quick 
yet careful aim and shot him in the leg. He still 
almost got Fox who had to step back again quickly or 
the trooper would have landed on top of him. As it 
was, he landed in a heap on the side of the road and 
apparently came out of his dementia. He began 
confusedly bemoaning his pain, "What the..? What the 
hell?" he said surprisedly from the ground as he 
grabbed at his hurt leg.
Fox stood there for a moment with his gun on him when 
headlights flashed bright on him from the side. It was 
the little blue sedan. It had driven free of the 
shoulder , spun around in the road and was headed 
right for Fox. Fox rolled onto the hood of his own car 
and as the car accelerated past, Fox made the mistake 
of looking at it. Red eyes like fire bored into his 
mind. His brain seized up and when he tried to see, 
lights like multi-colored flashbulbs went off in his 
eyes. He rolled off the hood of his car as he 
struggled to regain his senses. When he hit the 
asphalt, he opened his eyes and everything was red. He 
looked through the eyes of a blood crazed predator at 
the trooper on the ground clutching his shot leg.
Fox stood up and reached over onto the trunk of his car to 
retrieve his pistol. He picked it up and held it in 
his hand. It felt good. Really good. It was like he 
had suddenly got his long gone claws and teeth back 
and was ready to hunt through the jungle for prey. He 
turned toward the trooper and aimed the weapon at him 
and began to walk toward him.
"Oh, god! Please, no...Dooon't!" The trooper screamed and 
crossed his arms in front of his face as if it might 
stop a bullet. The scream caused Fox to jerk and fire 
his gun over the trooper. The sound of the shot jerked 
Fox partially back to reality and he looked down at 
the pleading officer and as he leveled his gun for 
another shot his arm went stiff and he began to fight 
with his anger over the terrible thing he was about to 
do. Choking sounds came from Fox and a heavy sweat 
broke over his face as he struggled for control of his 
thoughts and actions. Swinging his arms in the air and 
viciously screaming at his inner demons to leave him 
be, he danced about wildly in the road.
The near hysterical troopers eyes bugged out of his head in 
witness to this spectacle but he still managed to 
attempt to crawl toward his gun. As he crawled, he 
began reciting the Lord's Prayer in a faltering voice.
Fox continued to flail at the air and yell, when the gun in 
his hands went off and shot into the air. Once again, 
the sharp sound knocked him back to reality and just 
in time to see the trooper reach for the gun on the 
ground. "Don't!" Fox yelled out and the trooper froze. 
Fox felt himself slipping back into dementia as more 
hurtful images of his past began to flash in his 
mind's eye. He had to act quick if he was going to 
keep either the trooper or himself from being injured 
or killed. He wheeled around suddenly and ran off into 
the field along the road and he kept running as fast 
as he could.
The trooper on the ground saw Fox run into the blackness on 
the other side of the headlight beam and grabbed his 
gun off the road and pointed it out in the direction 
Fox ran. He shaded his eyes with one hand and squinted 
out into the darkness for a minute and then from far 
out in the field he heard a strangled scream like a 
dying wildcat. Then he dragged himself to his car and 
as he reached the door, he passed out on the pavement.

End (3/5)


Hoodoo (4/5) by K. Turnbull
 
Dana Scully opened her eyes and looked out at a bright 
sterile hospital room. Her arms followed the tube 
sticking out of her arm up to the I.V. bag hanging on 
the rack above her bed.  To the side of her bed she 
saw a man sitting in a chair and looking down at a 
magazine in his lap. Dana cleared her throat and the 
man looked up. It was Detective Kellogg. He threw the 
book onto the side table as if he was embarrassed to 
have been caught reading it and said, "Agent  Scully?" 
He paused for a second to put on his smile and he 
added, "How ya' feelin'?"
Scully blinked her eyes hard and then opened them wide in 
an attempt to shake off her grogginess. She said, "I 
don't know yet. Give me a minute."
Kellogg's face switched to one of seriousness and he said 
flatly, "We may not have a minute. Something's 
happened with your partner!"
"Mulder?" Scully sat up halfway in bed and when she leaned 
back against the wall she winced in pain. She reached 
back and felt the bandages on the back of her head 
where she had hit the pavement. "Oh...Yeah," she said 
weakly.
Kellogg leaned over the bed and gave her head the once 
over. "You all right? I could get the nurse,"  he 
asked caringly.
Scully waved away his question with her hand and asked, 
"What about Mulder?"
"We're not sure of all the details," he said stepping back 
from the bed and sitting down in the chair, "But your 
partner is nowhere to be found and his car is riddled 
with bullet holes, although, we didn't find any blood 
in it."
"So, who was shot?" asked Scully.
"A State Trooper, in the leg. He's all right but he hasn't 
been any help at all in clearing this up. He claims he 
never fired a shot but his gun was empty when we found 
him passed out in the road." Kellogg stated this fact 
with a puzzled expression.
"When did this happen?" Dana said and she looked at her 
wrist to check the time and saw her watch was gone. 
"What time is it now?" she added.
"We think it happened between  1:45 AM and 2:00 AM. It's, 
uh.." He checked his watch, "It's 2:30 now," he said, 
smiling again. `Oh," he added, "We picked you up at 
1:35."
Scully felt her head again and said, "I've been out that 
long?"
"Yep," he said folding his arms on his chest and leaning 
back in his chair. "Nasty bump." he added.
"Can you please hand me my chart?" Dana asked and pointed 
at the front of the bed. Kellogg got up and removed 
the chart from the front of the bed and handed it to 
her. "Hmm," she said as she looked it over, "It looks 
like I'm going to be all right. When can we go to the 
scene?"
"Oh, no!" Kellogg interjected, "You've got to stay right 
here for observation. I'm here to question you about 
the case you're working on to see if you have any 
ideas about what happened here. By the way, I've got a 
man bringing in the dashboard video tape from the 
police car of the trooper who was shot."
"As a qualified MD, I can make that decision." Scully told 
Kellogg. "And I can't really discuss the case we're 
working on until I'm able to confer with my partner. 
However, I would like to see that tape though."
"Yeah, I thought so," said Kellogg, disappointed.
"Would you mind leaving the room so I can get dressed?" 
said Dana and Kellogg turned and walked out the door.
"Dana pulled the tube from her arm and put on her clothes. 
The last thing she put on was her jacket and before 
she did, she tried in vain to wipe off the dirt 
embedded in the back of it with her hand. "Shoot!" she 
exclaimed as another pebble fell off of it and hit the 
floor.
"Hey, you can't get out of bed." Said a big colored nurse 
in a blue uniform who had walked in the door. She 
looked at the front of the bed and said, "Where's your 
chart?"
"Oh, sorry, I should have put it back." Scully said and 
pointed at the chart on the bed where she had left it. 
"I'm a qualified MD and an FBI agent," she added as 
she continued to brush at her jacket. "If you'd like I 
can sign my own release papers, I've got urgent 
business to take care of."
The nurse seemed a little befuddled at this  and said, 
"Well, uh, okay I guess. Just let me take your 
temperature first and then we'll go out to the front 
desk and ask a doctor about it."
Scully took the thermometer from her hands and said, "I was 
just about to do that." She shook it down and placed 
it in her mouth and looked at the watch she had 
replaced on her wrist a minute before. Just then, 
Kellogg knocked on the door. "Come in," Dana said.
"I've got the tape," he said as he walked in. He turned to 
the nurse and asked her if there was a VCR available. 
She said there was one down the hall in the doctor's 
lounge.
With the thermometer still in her mouth, Scully picked up 
her chart off of the bed and walking to the door, 
motioned for the nurse to lead her down the hall. The 
nurse led them down the hall to their right and opened 
a door and held it for Scully and Kellogg to enter. 
Once inside, they walked over to a port-a-stand with a 
TV and a VCR on it surrounded by a sectional couch in 
the middle of the room. Kellogg put the tape in and 
fiddled with the VCR while the nurse finished taking 
Dana's temperature and writing it on the chart.
When Kellogg got a picture on the screen, Scully dismissed 
the nurse and waited for him to rewind it. "Here it 
is," said Kellogg as the screen showed the police car 
pulling over and parking just back from Fox's and the 
salesman's cars so that the side of Fox's car is 
visible and a back view of the other is. While he 
called in his position the air filled with red and 
blue flashing lights as he turned on the top lights to 
warn any oncoming motorists. Then they saw the trooper 
walk away from the camera after he exited the car and 
go to Fox's window and pound on it with his 
flashlight. They could see Fox in the flashlight beam 
afterward and then the trooper walked away toward the 
other car. It's back end was in the shallow ditch and 
it's lights shone up into the air over the road.
The trooper shined his flashlight beam into the window and 
talked to the driver. Through the back window of the 
car, Dana and Kellogg could see the back of a man's 
head over the seat and as he talked to the trooper he 
gestured with his hands a lot. The trooper then turned 
and started walking back toward the patrol car, with 
each step he took though his movements became more 
mechanical and robot-like, and he even stumbled a 
little, the pair observed, as they watched. He stopped 
across the highway from Fox's car and they watched 
fascinated when, in the glare of the headlights, the 
trooper's face twisted into a malignant murderous look 
of hate. He drew his weapon, turned and began firing 
into the car containing Fox Mulder. Dana gasped in 
horror and Kellogg said, "What the..." Behind the 
firing trooper, the man in the blue car stuck his head 
out the side window and looked back at the scene 
unfolding.
They watched in silence as the trooper advanced on the car 
and then the door flew open and hit him. There was a 
brief lull while the trooper was sprawled out on the 
ground and then his head lifted and in the tape they 
could hear Fox order him to freeze. The car in the 
background began to spin it's tires and the trooper 
leaped out of the frame in front of Fox's car and 
there was a shot and Fox appeared near the front of 
his car holding his hands out of frame as if he was 
pointing a gun. Behind him, the two spectators saw the 
blue car lurch free of the shoulder and turn in the 
road and head straight at Fox. Dana and Kellogg both 
nearly jumped out of their seats as they watched the 
car speed by and narrowly miss Fox. Afterward there is 
nobody on screen but they can hear the police man 
pleading and then he screams and a shot is fired and 
then they hear what sounds like Fox choking and 
gasping. 
Suddenly Fox appears and seems to be fighting with himself. 
Struggling with the air. Past him, they see the 
trooper crawling for his gun. Fox's gun goes off in 
the air and he orders the trooper to stop. Then he 
wheels around and disappears off camera to the right. 
Kellogg managed to pull his drooping jaw back up and 
say, "What the hell was that ?"
"Whatever it was," said Dana, "We've got to get out there 
right away and find Fox."

Dana Scully poked her still bandaged head into the 
obliterated window of the car Fox Mulder had been 
sitting in when he had been fired upon. The far side 
of the dash and the opposite door  were riddled with 
bullet holes.
"He sure was lucky!" said Detective Kellogg as he walked up 
and peered into the passenger window next to her.
"And smart," added Dana as she pulled her head from the 
window. She stood up straight and looked at Kellogg, 
"Are all of your men ready ?" she asked.
He looked around him at the ten policemen in hunting 
clothes that were standing around talking to each 
other and looking at maps. "Suns up," he said.
"They do know that they're not to harm him in any way, 
right ?" Dana said seriously.
"Yes." Kellogg said and waved the men out into the field. 
"Spread out," he yelled after them when they went. 
Then he and Dana walked out past the trooper's police 
car still parked there from that morning as a tow 
truck arrived and a uniformed police officer stepped 
out into the road to greet it. They walked out on what 
they could tell from the tape was probably Fox's point 
of entry to the field which was mostly short bushes 
and grass with trees growing along streams at it's 
borders.
Kellogg took the lead and began pointing out to Dana some 
broken twigs and the occasional footprint that must 
have been Fox's. "This is just like the Boy Scouts," 
said Kellogg, "Except there were no girls."
Dana looked the other way and rolled her eyes. "Fox!" she 
yelled. At least they were doing this on a nice cool 
morning, she thought. "Mulder!" she yelled again.
After they had gone about a hundred yards out into the 
field, Kellogg stopped and inspected a patch of 
ground. He looked up at Scully and said, "Now, I've 
been on some bear hunts and it looks like a bear went 
through here. Only the footprints look like they're 
from some guy from New York City and for some reason 
he seems to have stomped around an awful lot for no 
reason. Looks like he had ants in his pants."
Dana looked at the bushes and saw that there was a path of  
broken twigs and branches and stomped down weeds. The 
dirt in between had smooth soled foot prints that 
danced around and pointed every which way crazily. She 
and Kellogg followed the trail until it stopped and 
she looked around and saw a shoe sticking out of the 
undergrowth. "Fox ?" she called toward it. She knelt 
down and tugged on the shoe, there was no foot in it. 
She looked into the bushes and saw a tunnel in them. A 
small tunnel. She lowered her head and looked into it 
and saw a foot with a black stocking on it. She 
reached out and tugged on it and said, "Fox ?" It 
pulled out of her hands and the bushes rustled and she 
could hear Fox cough. "Mulder ?"
"Scully is that you ?" Fox's voice said from the bushes.
"Yes, Fox," said Dana, "Are you all right ?"
"I think so. Where am I ?" he asked from under the bushes.
"You're down a...a fox hole, Mulder," said Scully, finally 
cracking a relieved smile. Kellogg, meanwhile, got on 
his two-way and called off the other searchers.
"Ow, ow, Scully. I can't get up, there's thorns all around 
me, it feels more like a porcupine hole," said Fox 
from the hole.
Dana looked up the hole at his leg again and said, "You're 
going to have to back out the same way you went in, 
Fox." She reached up and grabbed his foot again, "I'll 
guide you," she said and Fox began to slowly back out 
of the hole. In a couple of minutes he emerged with 
his shirt pulled up over his head and Dana pulled it 
back down onto him. He sat up on his knees and looked 
around. 
"Boy, was that weird," he said. "How did I get in there ?"
"You tell me," said Scully, "Can you walk ?"
He got up and stretched his legs. "Looks like it," he said.
"Good, let's get out of here," said Dana.


After Fox had been checked out at the hospital, Mulder and 
Scully watched the incident on  video tape again. 
"Before we watch the tape, Mulder, tell me what you 
remember," Dana said. "Just for the record."
Mulder thought on it for a second and started, "Okay, I 
followed the car out of town and..Oh, yeah Scully," 
Fox said with a grin, "Something funny happened at a 
bar just before that. Remind me to tell you about it 
later. I was going down the road about a quarter mile 
behind him when it went off the road. When I caught up 
to it as I drove past, a man with glowing red eyes was 
sitting in it. He looked at me... That's the last 
thing I remember. Until this morning."
"Maybe this will jog your memory," said Scully and she 
started the VCR. She watched it again with Mulder and 
afterwards he told Dana to rewind it back to where the 
blue car drove at him. She did and he pointed at the 
TV. "There. See it?" he said excitedly.
"What ?" Dana asked.
"The red glow of his eyes," he said.
"Are you sure that's not the lights from the police car?" 
Dana asked.
"No, no, that's definitely coming from inside the car. We 
have to find this guy...thing...whatever it is. He 
really seems to have an indiscriminate ability to 
affect peoples minds so they become extremely, 
irrationally, violent. I remember now. I drove past 
and the next thing I knew, I was sitting in my car 
fighting off the memories of every really bad thing 
that ever happened in my life." Fox paused and looked 
sincerely at Dana. "And very violently too," he said. 
"My head and my hands still hurt."
"I'm not doubting you," said Dana, "I saw the steering 
wheel in your car. It was like a pretzel." She thought 
for a second and then asked, "So why do you suppose 
you didn't attack anybody like everyone else?"
"It can only be that at the time I was affected there was 
no one else around. So I turned my anger inward. The 
second time I was exposed I did act violently, 
however, I managed to fight it off before hurting 
anyone," Continued Fox, "Do you think it could have 
some sort of lessening effect like a drug resistance 
with repeated exposures?"
"Let's hope we never find out," said Dana.
"Wouldn't you say I'm a pretty level-headed guy?" Asked 
Fox.
"A little nutso," she said.
"Okay, granted, a little nutso. But in control," he said, 
"You don't see me flying off the handle about just 
anything. I was uncontrollable and you saw that 
Trooper. Jesus, he went completely berserk. I wonder 
what he was thinking. I'm lucky I'm not dead." A tired 
look crept over Fox's face and he sat down on a 
section of sofa, stared at the floor and took a deep 
breath.
Dana sat down next to him and put a hand on his shoulder. 
"So what do we do this time?" Dana said, resolved to 
another monster hunt.
Fox remained looking at the floor, his head in his hands. 
"We don't look at his eyes, that's what we don't do. 
The eyes are the pathways to the soul and we can't 
trust what's in there right now," said Fox sluggishly  
through his hands, still looking at the floor.
"But how are we going to catch him if we can't look at him? 
We'd have to be like Perseus slaying the gorgon," said 
Dana.
Fox looked up at her and said, "We know one thing for sure 
and that is we can't be having the police looking for 
him. So far, the people affected mostly haven't had 
guns. Can you imagine what would happen if he gets 
surrounded by a lot of armed men? A short war, but who 
knows who else could be around?"
"I'd better call Detective Kellogg right now," said Dana, 
"He's got an APB out on that car. What do I tell him?"
Fox smiled and said, "Tell him Washington will have his ass 
if he doesn't call it off! What else?"
"In that case, I'd better call Skinner too," said Dana and 
commenced to dialing her cell phone.

After leaving the hospital, Fox and Dana rented a car and 
headed out of town to go back to the highway. "Boy, 
was that Kellogg mad when I told him he had to take 
the APB off of the blue car," said Dana from the 
passenger seat.
"I'll bet," said Fox, "They always are." He looked over at 
Scully with a grin and added, "Sometimes it's the 
little things that make life worth living."
Dana chuckled and said, "Come on now, he's a nice guy. How 
would you like it if you were entrusted with the 
safety of a whole state and while your own officers 
are going berserk along with the FBI, you couldn't do 
anything?"
"Better him than me," said Fox and glanced out at a 
billboard with a big fish on it as he drove by. "KFISH 
97.3" It read, and, "For a good bass time in the 
country." After he drove by Fox reached over and 
turned on the radio.
"Oh, not now," said Dana covering her ears. "My head."
"I'll keep it low, I just remembered something." said Fox.
"What?" said Dana.
Fox said, "Give me a minute." And continued driving with 
the country music playing low.
"What?" said Dana after a minute, "You just remembered you 
like country & western?"
"No." Fox said, "I just remembered when I was waiting for 
that car the other night and it drove by, I could hear 
country music coming from it and I turned my radio on 
and it was the same station."
"Yeah?" said Dana, expectantly.
"I left it on because I thought it might, kind of give me 
some sort of a connection to him. Rather than just 
follow him, it was like I was up in that car with him. 
See?" Fox looked over at Dana to see if she was 
diggin' on his groove.
"Okay, So?" she said impatiently.
Fox looked forward at the road, he felt a bit like she had 
crushed his beat and he went back to his cold 
analytical agent trip. "As I was driving," he 
continued, "A newscast came on and did a piece about 
that white power guy, what's his name?
"Cole Hunter?" said Dana.
"Yes, that's him. When his name was mentioned, that was 
when the car started to swerve. The second time it was 
mentioned, it ran off the road," said Fox growing 
excited.
"So, what does that mean?" Dana asked as Fox stopped at a 
crossroads and turned right onto the highway.
"Don't you see?" Fox said, "The man in the car was being 
controlled by the hoodoo at that time. That's why the 
car went off the road. A person  or spirit even, from 
the 1860s would have no notion how to control a car at 
speed and when they mentioned Cole Hunter on the 
radio, the hoodoo got excited and took over complete 
control and, of course, crashed."
"So, you're saying this hoodoo has some sort of a 
connection to Cole Hunter?" asked Dana.
"Almost definitely! The old woman said it was the slave's 
thirst for vengeance that attracted the hoodoo spirit. 
How much do you want to bet that after all these years 
the slave is going to find his vengeance? I'll just 
bet Hunter was the name of the plantation family that 
owned the slave Jibus. It may have even been his full 
name. He's probably a direct descendant," said Mulder 
keeping his eyes on the road and his hands upon the 
wheel.
"How would we find out something like that?" said Dana and 
turned her head to look out the window at a big red 
barn with kudzu creeping up the sides.
"Maybe if there's a library in the next town, we can get 
lucky," Fox said.

At the front desk of a modest library, the agents ask the 
librarian, a short, pear shaped lady with big lensed 
eye-glasses if she has any books on plantations in 
South Carolina. They look through a few books in the 
shelf she pointed out to them but find them to contain 
only information on existing buildings and they 
inquire of her again if she might know where to find 
the information.
"You looked at all the books?" She asked and didn't wait 
for an answer. "I can only think of one place to look 
from here and that's the internet. You can find almost 
anything on the internet," she said and pointed to a 
computer at a table behind her desk.
"Okay," said Fox.
She went to the table and the agents walked around the desk 
to join her. "It's already booted up," she said as she 
tapped at the keyboard, "I just have to log on." They 
waited a couple of minutes and she said, "There! Just 
put whatever you want in the search engine and enter 
it. It works best if you use combinations of words 
instead of just one." She typed 
"South+Carolina+Plantations" in and clicked on enter 
with her cursor and waited while the "hits" came on 
the screen. "See ?" she said and moved out of the way 
so Fox and Dana could use it.
"I knew that." Dana said to Fox when the librarian walked 
away.
"Yeah, sure," said Fox mockingly. "Now watch out and let 
the Big Kahuna surf."
They looked around on it with no luck when Dana said, "Why 
not put in "Cole Hunter"?
Fox typed it in the search for space and entered it. He 
waited for it to work and then scrolled up the screen 
to see the hits. Fox and Dana looked at the screen and 
read the first one by the monitor group HateWatch, it 
read, "It is our opinion that the white Brotherhood, 
led by the infamous Cole hunter is the epitome of evil 
in the Southland...." It was obviously about the 
present day Cole, a testament to his notoriety but not 
what the agents were looking for. They scrolled up the 
list  until they came to a hit at the bottom that was 
by LineageFinders that read, "...among the worst of 
the plantations, from the point of view of the slaves, 
CaneRoot Point stands out. At the time before and up 
to the Civil War, it was owned by the patriarch of the 
Hunter Clan, Cole Hunter. A man purported to have 
embodied the wickedness and the cruelty of the Pre- 
freedom South."
"Who's the Kahuna now ?" said Dana. "Click on that."
When the site appeared on the screen, Fox and Dana leaned 
in close for a good look. A map of the location was on 
the HomePage. "This sure looks like about the right 
location," said Fox, pointing at the map. "There's 
pictures in here." He clicked on the highlighted words 
"some old daguerreotypes" and waited for the screen to 
change. Afterwards, two old pictures appeared on the 
screen. One was of a stately plantation house and the 
other was a picture of an unsmiling man in a shirt and 
vest. Fox and Dana stared at it a moment, intrigued by 
the malevolent cast of his facial structure.
"He doesn't look very nice," said Dana.
"Reminds me of the people I put up with on a day to day 
basis in Washington," said Fox and clicked back to the 
Homepage. They read the rest of the information it 
gave concerning the possible lineage of slave names 
and then clicked out to the search engine list and 
scrolled down to the HateWatch piece and clicked on 
it. When the site came up, they both leaned into the 
monitor again and began to read, "HateWatch strongly 
urges concerned citizens to come out and protest the 
White Brotherhood's presence this weekend of the 19th 
and 20th of September at his "revival for survival" 
picnic. It is located on a piece of property just 
across the highway from the entrance to the 
Chickamauga battlefield Historical Park. 
Coincidentally, this is also the weekend that the 
Georgia Historical society commemorates the battle by 
reenacting it." 
"If you happen to be going to the reenactment, you might 
stop and lend your support to us as we peacefully 
protest this racist gathering. If you decide to join 
in the demonstration we suggest you bring your own 
signs that are not overly inflammatory, such as "Stamp 
out hates fire before it spreads to your neighborhood" 
or "White isn't right when it is wrong !" No cuss 
words please, we mean to keep this peaceful. Remember 
if you don't stand up for what's right, why should 
anybody stand up for you?"
"That's tomorrow," Dana said.
"Uh huh," Said Fox and clicked the mouse again and a new 
window came up with pictures of some White Brotherhood 
members. In one of them, about twenty men stood around 
a fire made of truck tires thrown up against a big 
wooden cross that is sending up thick black smoke into 
the sky. All of them are holding up guns triumphantly.
Fox poked his finger at the screen. "There he is right 
there," he said. Dana looked closer at where he was 
pointing to a man in the middle of the picture wearing 
a black leather vest and army boots and holding  up a 
.45  Automatic pistol. Dana gasped when she realized 
he looked exactly like the man in the Daguerreotype. 
"Well, I guess we know, now, where our hoodoo is 
headed," Fox said. They looked through the rest of the 
site and as they left the library, Dana said "Thank 
you, very much," to the librarian.
She looked up from her filing task and said, "Bye. Hope you 
found what you were looking for."
" Oh, I think so," said Fox to Dana as they walked out the 
door. When they reached the car, they got in and Fox 
asked Dana, "So, how far is it to this Chickamauga 
place?"
"Chickamauga Historical battlefield," said Dana. "The 
bloodiest two days in American history."
"How do you know that?" asked Fox.
"I studied in school. What did you do?" she said.
"Daydreamed about UFOs !" said Fox. "What else?"
  Dana took a map from the glove compartment and unfolded 
it. She looked at it for a few seconds and said, 
"Chickamauga's about forty miles from here. We could 
be there in an hour."
"If we wanted to be." said Fox and he started the car and 
drove out of the parking lot and drove down the street 
and parked in front of a liquor store. He sat there 
with his hands on the wheel, thinking.
Dana waited for a minute before she said, "Okay, what now?"
Fox let go of the steering wheel and leaned back. He looked 
over at Dana and said, "We  think we know where to 
find our hoodoo now but what do we do about him? We 
can't approach him. Can we contain him?"
Dana thought for a second. "I guess we can't just run him 
off the road and shoot him," she said, only half 
joking. "Of course, it might be justifiable with all 
the carnage it's caused."
"Yeah, well, we're not just talking about some monster 
here. There is the salesman to consider. He's really 
just an innocent bystander," said Fox.
"More like a Typhoid Mary of a very fast acting and deadly 
disease," said Dana. "So what do we do?"
"I think I've got it," said Fox, "I think he may have a 
destiny to fulfill with Cole Hunter. I think if we 
allow him to fulfill his destiny, we may be able to 
save the life of the salesman and even if we can't we 
may make the world a little better place to live."
Dana looked out her window at an old man in tattered 
clothes coming out of the liquor store and said, 
"Sounds risky. If we do this, we'll need to keep him 
from making contact with any more people on the way."
Fox leaned forward and put his hands on the steering wheel 
again and arched his back to stretch it and said, "If 
we can find him before it gets dark, that should be 
easy. He has one night left to travel and he doesn't 
seem to come into contact with people unless he needs 
alcohol. I think the reason the hoodoo took him over 
so easily must be because his alcoholism has him 
weakened down to the point  where he can't resist."
"We don't know he's an alcoholic," interjected Dana.
"I think that's pretty clear judging from the fact that 
there was a broken bottle back at that shack and the 
fact that everybody effected so far besides me and 
that officer were in bars," Fox said.
"Maybe he's just a social drinker," Dana said, making a 
half hearted attempt at a joke. "Okay, you're right," 
she added and waved her hand in the air at the 
thought.
Fox looked at her a little sideways and said, "Anyway, I 
think if we go in here and buy him some whiskey and 
some cigarettes and maybe some junk food we can find 
where he parks during the day and leave it for him. 
Then we wait for night to fall and we tail him all the 
way there."
"You think we should buy him whiskey, so he can go 
driving?" asked Dana incredulously.
"Let's hear your plan," Fox said.
Dana thought for a second. Then she said, "We-e-ell, he 
hasn't crashed into anybody yet."
"Okay then," Fox said and unbuckled his seatbelt to get out 
of the car. So did Dana, and they both got out. As 
they walked up to the store he said, "Got any money on 
ya'?"
"Hey, it's your plan," said Dana.
  

After Mulder and Scully left the liquor store they went 
down the highway to where Fox had encountered the 
hoodoo and began searching for his daytime hiding 
place starting there. They drove along at about forty 
miles per hour mostly but they slowed and stopped a 
lot along the way to take a closer look for the little 
blue car they expected to find parked somewhere among 
the trees and bushes along the highway.
It was getting to be late afternoon when Fox climbed a big 
oak tree and looked through binoculars at another 
expanse of land along a road leading off the highway. 
"I think I've got something here," he yelled down to 
Dana. She lowered the binoculars from her eyes and 
looked up at him. She could see he was climbing down 
out of the tree so she waited until he was on the 
ground to speak.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Blue car, sticking out of some bushes up that dirt road a 
ways," he said as he walked to the car. "If it's him, 
I'll just sneak up and put the groceries on the hood. 
He ought to find them there."
"Don't you think that might make him a little suspicious?" 
Dana asked as she slid into the driver's seat.
"I don't think he'll argue with free booze," Fox said.
They drove down to the dirt road and turned right onto it. 
Then they reconned the area and figured out the best 
way for Fox to sneak up to the car. Having figured 
this out, they pulled over and Fox carried the bag of 
groceries down the road to where the blue car was. He 
snuck around the side of it and peeked into the 
window. Amidst the litter of the back seat he saw a 
thin balding man curled up in the fetal position 
asleep. The inside of the car was a shambles and as 
Fox looked on in fascination at the terribly torn 
upholstery, the sleeping man let loose a piteous wail 
and began to spasm and thrash about, stirring up the 
trash, liquor bottles and clothes. Fox retreated into 
the bushes and waited until he stopped making noise. 
Then he crept to the front of the car and put the 
bulging bag onto the hood directly in front of the 
steering wheel. As he turned to go, though, he noticed 
that the driver's side window was gone and the broken 
glass hung out on the door on a few tattered rags of 
safety glass sheeting. He went back to the car and 
removed the bag from the hood and instead, ever so 
gently put it through the bare window onto the 
driver's seat and he slunk back into the bushes.
Back at the car, Dana waited for him behind the wheel. He 
opened the door and got in. "All set," he said, "We 
just have to sit and wait for night and then we can 
follow him at a healthy distance to where I'm sure 
he'll be going in the morning. See if you can pull the 
car behind something where we won't be seen."
"Okay, " Dana said, "I think there's a place over here 
where we might be able to see through the bushes to 
the car." "Yes, right here." she added as she shut off 
the car and they both peered through the bushes at the 
little blue car parked there. "I don't see the bag," 
Dana said, "Did you set it on the hood?"
Fox grinned underneath the binoculars he was looking 
through and said, " It's on the front seat."

End (4/5)

Hoodoo (5/5) by K. Turnbull

They continued waiting until late that evening when Fox 
saw the blue car's dome light come on. He reached over 
and shook Dana awake by the shoulder. She looked up at 
him. "It's alive," he said and she reached to the side 
to actuate the lever to make her seat go back up. 
As they sat there peering out , they saw the man get out of 
his car and do his business into a bush. Afterward, he 
went to the front door and opened it. He stood there a 
second and then leaned down into the car to inspect 
the shopping bag. Through the agent's open car window, 
they heard him say loudly, "Well' I musta' done 
something right last night."  He climbed in and there 
was a "ker-chunk" as he closed the door.
Through the bushes, the agents listened to the motor as it 
labored to start up. After the third try it fired and 
he revved it loudly to keep it going. The little four-
banger idled rough and fast as it warmed up. Inside, 
under the dome light, the agents watched as the 
salesman took out one of the half-pint bottles of 
Kessler's, put it to his lips and tipped it up 
draining it completely before throwing it down onto 
the floor of the car.
"He's not worried about cops, is he?" said Dana.
The car suddenly zoomed out of it's hiding place, it's 
headlights splitting the night as it turned down the 
dirt road toward the highway.
"Let's get going," said Fox and in another instant the 
headlights passed them on the dirt road, country music 
blaring through the open windows. "I think the only 
good thing in that car is the stereo," Fox said as he 
reached out to turn on the stereo to see if it was 
still the same station. "Yep," he said. Dana started 
the car and threw it into gear, lurched out of the 
bushes and turned onto the road with the headlights 
off. "Careful now, careful," Fox warned as he leaned 
forward and looked out at the taillights that were 
fading fast toward the highway.
"I know what I'm doing," said Dana, keeping her eyes on the 
darkened road ahead. "I took a class in surveillance 
driving techniques." Just then, the car hit a bump in 
the road and bounced wildly and Dana wrestled the 
wheel for control.
"Nice techniques!" said Fox as he gripped his seat tightly.
"Armadillo," said Dana after she had gotten the car in 
control, "Could have happened to anyone."
"Armadillos don't occur this far east," Fox said.
"When it's this dark out," joked Dana, "How's it supposed 
to know how far east it is?"
"Just follow those taillights," said Fox.
As the car they were following hit the highway heading 
North, there were still a few cars traveling on it so 
the agents felt fairly safe turning on their lights as 
they turned onto it. They followed for a few minutes 
when Dana said, " You know, he doesn't really have 
that far to go. And they do so occur throughout the 
South."
"Yeah, I know," said Fox, "After he reaches Chickamauga, 
he'll probably hole up for the night. We'll just have 
to wait and see."
"One thought occurs to me," said Dana, "Why didn't we keep 
any of that food for ourselves?"
"Yeah! And some of that whiskey," said Fox with a grin.
Fox had left the radio in the car playing and when the 
music ended Fox turned it up to listen to the DJ. His 
voice oozed out from the speakers, "Hey! Hey! This is 
Jay! Man, I hate to stop the music when it sounds so 
good on a warm Georgia night. But since all the nights 
are warm here, we'd never hear any news and there 
would be an information vacuum. Wharoooom! ( the sound 
of a vacuum cleaner comes on ) Hey! Hey! Shut that 
thing off, Clara. It'll just get dirty again. I've got 
a whole bag of tortilla chips and a bowl of salsa to 
spill  and the night is young here in fish country. ( 
Boowhomp ) News! News! They want me to tell the news! 
So here's my version of it, politicians with their 
pants down, Middle East monarchs march into madness, 
ex-world powers wallow in confusion. Now for the stuff 
I think is important. Farmers are still finding bass 
lures stuck to their cows. Come on now folks, I fish 
therefore I am out a few bucks every time I buy one of 
these lures. How can you afford that? Get over it. 
According to the rules of sportsmanship and the fish 
and game laws of Georgia, the fish is supposed to 
willingly take the bait in it's mouth. Now  I know 
that cows don't go around eatin' frogs and shiny 
wooden plugs so ya' must be snaggin' `em. Quit it! Ya' 
buncha' hicks. Oh' yeah, speakin' of hicks. Cole 
Hunter has not yet sought the seriously needed 
psychiatric help which would rid him of the urge to 
make a complete ass of himself. And, yes, I don't mean 
to advertise for him but he is still throwing his 
Pompous Picnic for Peanut Heads or would that be his 
Raucous Romp for racists ? At any rate, don't go 
there. As you know by now from our previous 
broadcasts, Cole's Cretinous Communion coincides with 
the Battle of Chickamauga Reenactment. It not only 
coincides with the time, but with the location as 
well. So you all's coming from the North to get to the 
reenactment, make sure you don't take a right instead 
of a left when you get to the entrance or you might 
find yourself in a movie you don't want to be in. If 
you're coming from the South, that's vice a versa for 
you. OH, hey! Word from our sponsor coming up, 
riiiggght....now."
Fox turned the radio down. "That's funny," he said to Dana, 
"I was sure the car was going to go out of control 
again when Cole's name was mentioned."
"Lucky it didn't," said Dana glancing to the side to look 
at Fox, "This car coming toward us was just passing it 
right about then."
"Look out!" Fox yelled and reached out and pushed at the 
top of the steering wheel. Dana's head snapped forward 
and her hands clenched on the steering wheel as she 
finished Fox's actions and steered into the other lane 
to avoid by inches a head-on crash with the other car 
she had just mentioned. Dana expertly turned the car 
before it went off the road and, with a minimum of 
fish-tailing, brought it to a halt on the side of the 
road.
"Wow!" said Fox sinking relievedly back into his seat. 
"Good driving."
Dana's hands still white-knuckled the steering wheel. She 
looked at Fox with wide eyes, "If you hadn't pushed 
the wheel...." She took one hand off of the wheel and 
put it over her face and let out a relieved, "Whew !"
Fox, meanwhile, took off his seatbelt and looked over the 
back of his seat and out the window. Instead of seeing 
the other car stuck in a beanfield as he had expected 
to however, it was about a hundred yards back and just 
spinning around in a cloud of dust on the shoulder to 
head back toward the agents.
"Go! Go!" Fox yelled at Dana as he spun around and put his 
seatbelt on. "It's coming back and I don't think it's 
to apologize!"
Scully looked into the rearview mirror and saw the car's 
headlights getting bigger. She threw the car into 
drive and floored it, aiming for the middle of the 
road. As the car behind them got closer, Dana began to 
veer from one shoulder to the other like a marine 
dodging bullets. Just as she nosed over the center 
line from the left, the car caught up with them and 
Dana dropped the auto shifter into second and hit the 
gas causing their car to lurch out of the way. The 
charging vehicle flew past where they were a second 
before and Scully hit the brakes. When she did, she 
looked at the other car as it went by. The dome light 
had come on and she saw two terrified children in the 
back seat, screaming and tugging at the woman driving 
in a desperate attempt to get her to stop.
"Oh my god, Mulder! There are children in that car!" Scully 
said. They both watched in horror as the car's driver 
struggled to maintain control of the vehicle as she 
oversteered and it careened wildly back and forth 
across the highway. She came too close to going off 
the road when she hit her brakes and stopped dead, 
sideways in the road.
Again, Fox and Dana let out a sigh of relief. They sat 
there looking at the car for a moment. "What should we 
do?" Said Dana.
"I'm not sure..." Fox said and up ahead of them, the road 
which until now had been straight began to curve as it 
went along a series of hills. Three curves up Fox saw 
the unmistakable marker lights of a semi truck as it 
wound it's way toward them and the car stopped in the 
road. "....But we'd better do it fast!" And he pointed 
at the truck.
Once again, Dana stepped on the gas and sped up the road to 
the car. She stopped before she got to it and left her 
lights to shine on it. She and Fox got out of the car 
and Fox ran up the road with a flashlight while Dana 
ran to the car. In the car, the driver slumped over 
the steering wheel sobbing and Dana knocked 
desperately on the window to get her attention. 
Meanwhile, Fox sprinted up the road in an attempt to 
gain enough yardage that the semi would have enough 
time to stop if it even paid attention to his warning.
Back at the car, the two children in the rear seats, a boy 
and a girl, of about nine and ten were struggling to 
get out but the doors would not open. Their mother was 
not responding to Dana's knocking and she was 
beginning to fear that the truck would get there 
before they could get out. Dana realized that the car 
was probably equipped with a childproof feature that 
enabled the driver to lock the back doors with the 
front lock. It bothered her to think that a mother who 
cared about her children enough to worry that they 
might be hurt falling from the car would endanger them 
so terribly. She looked in the back window and 
motioned for the children to reach into the front and 
unlock the door. The little blonde-haired girl in pig-
tails fearfully reached past her mom's seat and pulled 
the lever. Dana opened the rear door and the kids 
spilled out onto the road and clutched at her legs 
sobbing. Dana hustled them down the road to a tree 
along the side and told them to stay there and then 
she ran back to the car and began to wrestle the 
mother away from the steering wheel.
As she did, The semi-truck was just rounding the last bend 
in the road and Fox waved his arms and flashlight at 
it from the side of the road. As it went by the driver 
glanced down at Fox and said, "What the...?" Before he 
turned his head straight and saw the car in the road 
ahead of him. He hit his brakes but he had a big load 
behind him and the big wheels screeched and groaned 
along the pavement as they strained to stop the big 
truck.
Dana's reaction time quickened as she heard the big truck 
bearing down on them. She reached around the woman and 
unbuckled her seatbelt and the shoulder harness 
recoiled past her and she leaned in and grabbed the 
woman under her armpits. Dana bent her knees and with 
all of her strength kicked backwards and jerked the 
woman from the car. They both fell to the ground and 
Dana picked herself up and dragged the woman to the 
side of the road just as the semi hit the car with a 
crash and final screech of the brakes. The woman 
hanging limply in Dana's arms suddenly came to and 
began screaming for her children and they ran up the 
road to her and she slid from Dana's arms and slumped 
on the ground and embraced them tearfully.

Red, blue and yellow lights from the police cars and tow 
trucks flashed through the rear window as Fox and Dana 
drove away from the accident scene. From the passenger 
seat, Dana said to Fox, "I don't think you could 
possibly lie to me now!"
"About what?" Fox said.
"After watching you lie to those cops, out there, I think 
I've got you pegged." Dana said with a sly look.
"Oh yeah?" Said Fox, "There's a lot more to me than just a 
blank expression and a good story."
`Oh sure! Just watch yourself." She said teasingly and then 
she added, "Actually, I can't quite shake the feeling 
of saying that the woman merely lost control of her 
car when she was really trying to run us down like 
dogs."
"How does it feel that we loaded up a possessed alcoholic 
with booze and let him loose in a car out on a public 
highway?" said Fox. "And then we lose sight of him 
because he has the indiscriminate ability to turn 
ordinary people into psycho killers by staring at 
them?"
"Okay," Dana said, "Just don't say that again, you almost 
broke through my ability to mentally block that fact 
out, ever since we bought that for him."
"Ha, I knew you had to be relying on something other than 
your cold hard analytical disposition," Fox said and 
added, "You know, it's learned to drive."
"What?" said Dana.
"The hoodoo, the possessor. Judging by the fact that it 
didn't run off the road and managed to affect the 
woman's mind, I'd say it now has it's learners 
permit."
"This can't be good," said Dana and leaned back in her seat 
and closed her eyes. Fox continued driving until they 
reached Chickamauga a short time later and they 
managed to get a hotel room for the night since 
everybody who was in town for the reenactment was out 
sleeping in authentic troop tents.
The next morning the agents rose early and began combing 
the countryside for the little blue car. They searched 
in all directions, working fast so they could get back 
to Cole's picnic. After they had looked down every 
road and in every field near the historic park with no 
luck, they decided to go back and wait by the 
entrances to the two events. When they got near the 
gate to the Historic park they saw a long line of cars 
and pick-up trucks slowly making their way into the 
parking lots near the visitor's center. On the 
opposite side of the highway from it was another 
entrance. A long metal pipe framed wire gate with a 
padlocked chain wrapped around a fence post guarded a 
private dirt road that cut it's way a couple of 
hundred yards through a green pasture and terminated 
in a grove of pine trees.
Fox pulled the car over to the side of the highway where he 
could see both entrances. "So that must be where the 
Cole Hunter thing is going on. Do you think?" he said.
Dana put down the binoculars she was using to eye the road 
in front of them and said, "The radio said it was 
right across from the park entrance, so that must be 
it." She put her binoculars to her eyes again and 
looked at the grove of trees at the end of the dirt 
road. "I can see a couple of cars back in those trees. 
Nothing else. If that's where it is, it hasn't started 
yet," she said and lowered the binocs and relaxed into 
her seat.
"I guess we will just have to wait and see if he shows up," 
said Fox.
"Here's something now." Dana said as she looked out of the 
car toward the trees.
Fox looked past her to see a grey four-door sending up a 
cloud of dust behind it as it barreled up the road 
toward the gate. When it got there the driver slammed 
on the brakes and skidded to a halt sending more dust 
over the car to where it was obscured from view for a 
moment until the dust cloud drifted out over the cars 
on the highway.
The agents watched as two men got out of the car. One of 
them walked over and unlocked the gate while the other 
opened the car's trunk and lifted something out of it. 
He carried it over to the gate where the other was 
waiting and they walked out to the fence on the 
outside  and unfurled a long banner and began 
attaching it there. When they were done, they went 
back to the car and sat in it and waited.
As Dana and Fox sat in their car they couldn't help but 
observe the changes in the people pulling into the 
park after the banner announcing Cole's picnic was 
hung. Some of them rolled up their windows and stared 
straight ahead while others rolled their windows down 
and yelled angrily and shook their fists at the two 
men sitting in the car. When this happened, one or the 
other of the two men would lazily stick his hand out 
of the window and display his middle finger to the 
shouter.
Soon, some of the cars coming down the road began turning 
off into the private drive and stopping and talking 
through the windows to the men in the car. Afterwards, 
they would be given what looked like a flyer and be 
sent down the road toward the grove of trees. Some of 
the cars that pulled in, however, did not make it past 
the gate check and were sent back out the way they 
came. Most of these cars pulled over along the highway 
just past the fence banner and the people who emerged 
from them carried signs with anti-racist slogans and 
began congregating noisily on the highway just outside 
of the gate. They were joined by a small contingent of 
uniformed police officers who stayed just down the 
road from it all watching out for signs of trouble.
 Fox and Dana continued to sit in the car and watch. "I see 
they got their recommended sign slogans off of the 
internet," Fox said.
Dana pointed out the windshield at a protester and said, 
"There's a new one. White Blight. Did you notice all 
of these protesters are white themselves? No wonder 
there's so much self loathing going on in..."
"Hey, look at that." Fox cut her off suddenly. "Uh, oh, 
looks like trouble." Dana looked out at where the two 
men from the car walked out of the gate and into the 
midst of the protesters. They walked up to where a 
group of them were standing in front of the banner on 
the fence and began telling them to move away from it. 
The protesters stood their ground and the decibels 
rose as both sides verbally assaulted one another.
A blue car suddenly drove past the agents and sped into the 
driveway and sped down the dirt road toward the trees. 
The two gate guards turned from their argument and ran 
back into the gate to their car and looked puzzled 
about what to do next. Should they watch the gate or 
go after the car. Fox answered their question for them 
by driving through the gate. The two men jumped out 
into the road and blocked his way. Fox pulled out his 
ID and held it up to the two men.
"We don't recognize you," one of them said with a sneer.
Fox squinted out the window from the sun and said, "We're 
not from around here."
"You don't understand," the man said in a surly tone, "We 
don't recognize your federal jurisdiction here. This 
is private property and we don't have to let you in."
"Would you rather go to jail then?" Fox asked him.
"On what charge?" he said, bristling.
"Aiding and abetting in the escape of a wanted felon," Fox 
said, "That blue car that just blew through here 
contained a fugitive and I'm completely within my 
rights to follow him under the law of hot pursuit. So 
get out of my way." Fox revved the engine and let the 
car lurch forward toward the man in front of the car. 
He moved to the side and as they drove by he yelled out, 
"We still don't recognize you!"
The protesters cheered from the highway and as Fox and Dana 
drove down the dirt road, Dana said, "Who were those 
guys?"
"I don't know," said Fox with a grin, "Didn't recognize 
`em." They both had a chuckle over that.
When they reached the trees, they drove in amidst them and 
parked among the other cars and trucks, about thirty 
in all. They sat there for a second expecting somebody 
to come meet them but nobody came. They exitted the 
car and Dana stood up and looked around. "There it 
is," she said, pointing to the blue car that was 
parked on the other side of two pick-ups and a station 
wagon from them. One of the pick-ups had a 
bumpersticker that read, " Any day you get to shoot 
some sumbitch is a good day" Dana craned her neck to 
look into the car and added "He's still in there."
"Get away from it. Don't let him look at you." Fox said and 
they walked out of the trees into a clearing that had 
a lot of people standing around a couple of smoking 
barbecues, drinking beer and looking at a man standing 
on a big pine round talking. "Let's go see what he's 
saying," said Fox and they started across the lawn 
toward the crowd. As they neared the edge of the crowd 
they recognized the orator as Cole Hunter. He said it 
was just a barbecue but he wasn't missing a chance to 
stand on his stump and spout quasi-religious garbage 
to the intermittently camo clad, gun totin', beer 
drinkin' masses. The two agents stopped and listened 
in back of the crowd keeping their eyes peeled in case 
the hoodoo man should come and do his dangerous magic. 
"....Hell..," Cole was saying, " Is what befalls those who 
fall along the path and let devils do what they may. 
And the muddied races among us are the devils that 
wait to snatch up the ruins of our lives and live in 
our empty skins that they covet so. Yea! Believe you 
me," He said,  "The colored races are liken to vipers 
and to go amongst them liken to falling into a pit of 
vipers." Cole pointed to a sheet of plywood on the 
ground and a burly man in full camouflage with an AR-
15 rifle in his hands reached down and lifted one end 
of the plywood and flung it aside revealing an eight 
foot deep pit with the bottom full of rattlesnakes.
"That must be his right hand man." Dana said to Fox.
"I don't know," said Fox, "We could have done a little more 
homework,  I guess."
Cole Hunter stood tall on the round of wood and looked out 
over the onlookers with a fervent glare. "This is what 
we're here for today folks," he said, "A little 
demonstration." Behind him, the burly man set up a 
large tripod with a big rounded store security mirror 
on top. He aimed it into the hole and said to the 
onlookers, "Can ya' see that?"  After their 
affirmations he went back and stood behind Cole again 
who reached down to his feet and picked up a little 
animal cage.
"Ya' see this here?" he said, holding it up. "This here's a 
poor little white rabbit. Look at those big frightened 
eyes. Remind ya' of anyone?" He sneered evilly at the 
audience. "Yeah, that's right. But you don't have to 
act like little scared bunnies anymore." He pulled it 
out by the scruff of it's neck and held it over the 
pit of snakes. "Yea, like falling into a pit of 
snakes," he repeated to the crowd while lowering the 
rabbit closer to the pit. "Yea, I say the time is at 
hand when we don't have to live with vipers whose 
fangs drip with venom at the smell of our blood." The 
throats of the people tightened as he lowered the 
rabbit closer to the pit while their hands clenched 
and sweated on the beers they held.
"Am I really seeing this?" said Dana to Fox from behind the 
crowd.
"Dana, these people are different from us. To them, a 
hundred pounds of plastic explosives is like a dream 
come true," he answered.
Cole Hunter looked up and clenched his free hand into a 
fist and raised it defiantly toward the sky, "Lord," 
he said, "I'm not gonna' be a poor little white bunny 
to be dropped into a pit of snakes." He looked around 
at the people's faces to see if they were sufficiently 
shaken. Their anxious looks told him that they had 
equated themselves with the unlucky bunny and were 
ready for his manipulatory climax. He turned the bunny 
and looked into it's face and looked back at his 
audience. He fixed a cold hard stare upon them and 
loosed his grip on the bunny. It let out a squeal when 
it hit the bottom of the pit causing many in the 
audience to wince or gasp. They looked into the mirror 
at the bunny in the pit surrounded by snakes that 
licked the air with their forked tongues to sense it. 
They looked back at Cole who waited patiently, his 
gaze fixed upon them in anticipation of this desired 
effect. They looked to him now as their savior and he 
didn't disappoint them. He reached behind his back and 
drew a .45 automatic from his belt. He held it up by 
his face, tightly clenched in his grasp and looked at 
it, just as he had looked the bunny in the face just 
before throwing it into the pit. "No sirree !" he 
said, sneering at the gun in his hand, "Lord, I'm 
gonna' fight back!" He lowered the gun at the pit and 
began blasting away at the snakes.
Some of the people watching whooped and yelled and ran up 
to the pit to look in. Cole's assistant pulled out a 
pistol then and emptied a clip into the hole.
"Do y'all want to be little white rabbits?" Cole said as 
they looked into the pit at the dead bunny. The snakes 
had never bit it but Cole's assistant managed to put a 
.22 bullet into it that barely left a mark.
"No way!" Said a bearded biker type in a faded Levi jacket 
as he shook his beer in the air defiantly. Some more 
people chimed in but it was anticlimactic and petered 
off quickly. As Cole looks on he sees the crowd start 
to look uncomfortable and lose interest as they begin 
to wander back to the beer coolers and barbecue 
grills. Cole's eyes shifted back and forth over the 
crowd and his eyes betrayed, ever so slightly, a panic 
through his angry countenance. "Do you all want to 
have the teeth of the viper sunk into your sorry 
asses?" He snarled out at the fading crowd.
"Hell, no!" The Levi clad biker yelled.
Dana and Fox had retreated back slightly as the crowd 
dispersed and now Fox said from where they stood by 
the barbecue grills, "That guy is a plant."
"I saw that the first time he yelled that." Dana said 
smugly to him. "Cole knows that these people wouldn't 
be here if they didn't at least have some passing 
gripe with other races. He's just trying to use these 
primitive manipulation techniques to bring it out in 
to the forefront of their minds."
"So who is this?" Fox said, motioning toward a group of 
five thuggish looking leather and camo clad 
individuals wearing holstered pistols and bowie knives 
and acting generally menacing.
"Well that must be the flight or fight bunch. You see we're 
getting into a little more sophisticated technique 
here. The idea is similar to chemical control in that 
a substance, adrenaline and even a host of other 
chemicals science isn't even aware of are manufactured 
by the body at times of stress. Create stress in 
certain situations and deny the stressee the release 
of a physical or emotional exertion to rid the 
chemicals from the body and it creates a variety of 
manipulatively useful reactions. It's been compared to  
sodium pentothal. Under the control of master 
manipulators it's really very effective." Dana 
expounded effortlessly.
Do you think Cole is one?" Fox asked her.
Dana looked over at Cole as he attempted to win back the 
crowd from his stump pulpit. "I'll tell you what 
you're going to do!" He yelled, "You're gonna' fight!" 
And under his breath, she saw him mouth the words, 
"God damn it."
Dana looked back at Fox. "I think we can rule that one 
out," she said. Their heads turned as the failing 
water pump on a straining, badly pinging engine 
screeched horribly as it headed out of the trees 
toward Cole and the pit of snakes.

What the hell is that?" Cole said to his camouflaged crony 
who was standing next to him sweating in nervous 
anticipation of his wrath at the disinterest of the 
crowd. He looked at Cole and shrugged. "Well, go check 
on it, dammit." Cole snarled to him while motioning 
toward the car with his hand. Camo guy took a firm 
grip on his assault rifle and walked around the pit to 
meet the car that had already stopped a few feet from 
it's edge. The widely dispersed people who formerly 
made up the crowd stopped what they were doing to 
watch what happened next.
 As camo guy walked around the front of the car it's door 
opened and the salesman stepped out and stood there 
supporting himself by leaning heavily on the open 
driver's side door. He looked around at the crowd and 
then at Cole. He paused for a second as he stared at 
his face and then let out a piteous wail that turned 
all heads to look at his pale emaciated frame just 
before he fell to his knees on the ground letting the 
car door swing closed. He looked up at Cole Hunter 
still standing on his round and in a pitiful drained 
voice said, "I'm here. I'm here at last."
"Camo guy looked up at Cole and said, "I'll get him out of 
here."
Cole held up his hand motioning for him not to as he looked 
out at the crowd's reignited interest toward something 
he was a player in. Cole looked down at the wretch 
before him and it made him feel that much more 
superior. "What's that brother?" Cole said loudly in 
his best preacher's voice. "Come closer."
The salesman crawled weakly toward Cole until he reached 
the edge of the pit. He stopped there and sat back on 
his knees and said, "At....Last....Yes," between big 
gasping breaths.
"What's that brother?" Cole repeated, keeping one eye on 
the crowd. "You say you're tired of feeling the teeth 
of the black viper sink into your sorry butt? Are you 
come to join up with our humble group and drive the 
viper from our land and live in god's light for all 
eternity?"
The salesman blinked his eyes and peered up at Cole still 
not believing his luck that all these rednecks see is 
the body of the white salesman who's strings he now 
pulled. "Vipers! Yes, eternity!" He said loudly. "Oh 
yes, lord, eternity!"
Cole grinned a wicked smile at this turn of events and as 
the crowd moved in closer to see this new spectacle he 
continued his harsh sermonizing with renewed 
intensity. "Oh, yeah, brothers and sisters, you see 
here in this poor wretch the results of the treachery 
of the black snakes. This miserable waste of a human 
being before us was once a proud white man. See how he 
shakes and cowers like a dog? The dark races would 
have us all in this condition. Who here has the guts 
to stand up and say no, you're not sheep to be shorn 
or chickens to be plucked? You don't have white skin 
so you can be separated from the herd and fed on by 
wolves? Do you want to end up like this miserable 
skinny excuse for a man?"
"What's wrong with `im?" A heavyset woman in the crowd 
asked out loud.
Another man looked into the window of the little blue car 
and said, "Look at alla' them bottles. He's a drunk!"
"The black viper's have torn from him the means with which 
to have a decent life and have left him in a hell of 
hard drink and sin. Heed my words, for it is me he has 
come to for his salvation in his time of need. For 
even in the depths of his depravity, in his lowest of 
lows, he recognizes me for the white peoples savior 
that I am." Cole pointed his finger in the air and 
shouted, "And I shall deliver him."
>>From their spot at the back of the crowd Dana and Fox 
watched anxiously, expecting something bad to happen 
any minute. "Boy, this guy is really something else," 
Dana said.
"He'd make a good televangelist," mused Fox.
"Pick him up." Cole said to his camoed lacky, "Pick him up 
and bring him to me."
"Oh, geez!" Dana said, "What's he gonna' do now? Try to 
heal him?"
"Here it comes, I'll bet," Fox said, "If they all start 
shooting, run like hell for the barbecues. We can make 
it to the trees from there."
Dana looked over her shoulder at his suggested escape route 
and then back at Cole and the camo guy who was helping 
the salesman to walk by holding him from the side. He 
brought him up to Cole and stood there with him. Cole 
looked at the pale thin face of the salesman and had 
to put his disgust for yet another version of what he 
considered a worthless human being aside long enough 
to think of what to do next. The crowd was silent as 
they waited for what was to come next. Cole opened his 
mouth to speak but a strong, deep, colored man's voice 
cut him off. It was the salesman, "At last," he said, 
"At last. Massa Huntah, I can have my rest now."
Cole's eyes widened and his lips shrank back into a hideous 
yellow toothed snarl as red eyes leapt from the face 
of the ragged man before him. A great dark shape 
formed around the eyes and the spectral wings of a 
giant black bat enfolded Cole's upper body. Cole 
screamed and struggled with the thing and slipped off 
of his stand and tumbled into the pit of snakes. The 
fangs of the rattlesnakes sunk into him again and 
again as he rolled around struggling vainly to shake 
off the evil creature. When the large amount of poison 
reached his heart he died in the pit, his face a 
mirror of true horror and his lifeless eyes staring 
into those of the little white rabbit he had 
sacrificed for his cause.
Cole Hunter's coveted audience had run off to their cars 
and only the agents were left standing there. Camo guy 
got up off of the ground where he had fallen with the 
salesman when the bat appeared and looked in the pit 
at his fallen leader. He noticed Scully and Mulder 
watching him and he turned and walked away into the 
trees.
Fox and Dana stood there in the silence wondering what to 
do with the disheveled salesman sleeping on the ground 
when a roar rose up from a distant hill. They looked 
across the highway to see the civil war being fought 
one last time by men who just couldn't let it die. The 
ersatz troops charged up a hill and into the trees and 
disappeared into them. The silence returned and Fox 
looked at the dead man in the hole next to his dead 
rabbit symbol surrounded by poisonous snakes and he 
said, "Maybe now all this will die for good." And from 
the pit came the sounds of snakes hissing and rattling 
out their unheeded warnings.

End (5/5)
                                                               
THE END