From: Chuck Miller Date: 25 Jul 2007 04:27:18 -0700 Subject: [all-xf] A NIGHT OUT Source: atxc subject: Scully flashback/crossover rating: PG Spoilers: not really. i wish the ending could be a surprise, but that won't work. I figured if Mulder could have a defining childhood trauma, Scully could too. This short tale looks at the final 10 minutes of the 1974 first episode of "Kolchak: The Night Stalker," Kolchak vs. the original Jack the Ripper, through a different pair of eyes. Here is a link to some info on that episode and Kolchak in general: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolchak:_The_Night_Stalker Thanks! A NIGHT OUT CHICAGO ILLINOIS WILTON PARK JUNE 2, 1974 The little girl wasn't bored any longer. She was scared, a bit, but not too much. She was eight years old and she was braver than she used to be. She was also a detective, so she had hung around outside the creepy old house after she'd seen the man in the black suit carry the woman up the porch steps and through the door. He was probably a criminal. He was going to tie the woman up in there and hold her prisoner. For kidnapping ransom, maybe. If Sherlock Holmes were here, he would sneak up and get into the house somehow. But she wasn't Sherlock Holmes, she was just a kid detective, and she didn't have a Doctor Watson to go in with her and protect her with his revolver. Sometimes she thought maybe it would be better to be a doctor than a detective. Watson did both, didn't he? She acknowledged how scary police work could be, and then settled in to do her job properly. She stood and looked and looked at the house and strained her ears, picking at all the little sounds she could hear and trying to find one that could have been coming from the house. But it was so quiet and so still, nothing but crickets chirping, and that wasn't really a noise, it was part of the scenery and you didn't even notice it unless you were thinking about it. She had awakened in the dark time past midnight, which she loved because the world was different then. Quietly, she had pulled on her dirty clothes and crept downstairs to her aunt's kitchen, because she had been forbidden to do so. Everyone else was asleep, her brother, her parents, her aunt. She was the only person awake, maybe in the whole world, and she was not afraid of the dark and she was doing something she wasn't supposed to. Her breathing was quick and shallow and the inside of her chest tingled with the thrill of it. There were cookies in a jar on top of the refrigerator. Once down the stairs, she began to look at and think about the kitchen door. Her chest tingled harder, and so did her arms. If she wasn't even allowed downstairs at this hour, going outside would be the ultimate in heroics. The idea had taken hold, and for the girl to decide a thing was to do it. It seemed like it took her hours to move silently across the kitchen door and put her hand on the knob and undo the lock and twist ever so slowly. And then, all of a sudden, there she is, and the night world is not the same as it is during the day. When her legs quit trembling and her breathing got slower, she issued herself another challenge. I have to walk all the way around the block, she informed herself. I have to do it. Just one time and then come back in. She had made it halfway, to the street, maybe the very house behind her aunt's, when she saw the dark man and his burden. Once he and the woman had disappeared inside, the little girl dashed across the street and got behind some bushes. There she calmed herself and began a vigil. She wished she had got a bottle of Coke from the refrigerator to bring with her, but of course she had been so intent upon her escape she hadn't thought of it. She wondered how long she would be obliged to stand here, and what she would do if anything happened, and what kind of things might happen anyhow, and then the man came back out. Alone. He locked the front door, moved across the porch and down the steps with no noise at all. She could not see his face, he had a black hat pulled low, and he was wearing a cape, like Dracula. A cape! Nobody wore a cape in real life. This marked him as a suspicious character that was worth investigating. He also carried a cane, which was not as weird as a cape, but still out of the ordinary. He was up to something. She would have to learn everything she could, at least enough to write a report for the Captain. And it would have to be an excellent report, because she was already in trouble on the force for taking too many chances and shooting too many people. This assignment might be the only thing that would save her job. The girl lived a rich and exciting life inside her head. On one level she knew these things were only make-believe, but on another she knew they were just a different kind of real. Now that she had a task, she felt professional and authorized. She was a secret detective and she knew all kinds of things that regular people didn't know, and she went on important jobs that only she could do. She began to sidle ever so slowly around the tall bush so she could approach the house, when the other man appeared. He too was quiet, just like everyone else abroad on this night in this place. He was nothing like the first man. For one thing, he wore a white suit rather than a black one. And she could see his face in the glow of the streetlight. He wasn't scary. Under one arm he carried a thick black cable of some sort, and a funny pair of giant yellow gloves. For just a second she wondered if all this apparatus meant the guy was a spaceman. She had certainly never seen any earthly gloves like those. But of course there was no such thing as spacemen, she knew that much. She stayed behind the bush, poking out just the part of her head from the top down to just below her eyes, and watched the man-she thought of him as a good guy because he wore white, while the first man had automatically been classified as a bad guy-mount the wooden stairs, which creaked under his feet, as they had not done for the dark man. Silently, so that no one could hear, she shooshed the good guy, trying to make him be quieter. She gritted her teeth when she heard the sound of a breaking board on the porch. She looked wildly up and down the street to make sure the dark man was not coming back, and he wasn't. Not yet. The good guy came back down from the porch and walked around the house peeking and poking at windows and doors. After he had gone on around to the back of the house, the part she could not see, it was very quiet again for a minute, and then CRASSSH! She jumped and almost peed, looking frantically around, and then she whispered, "Duh! You dumbass," insulting herself for her failure to immediately recognize the sound of a window breaking. The good guy was going to get in the house that way, and she hoped he would find the girl that had been carried in earlier, and set her free. By now, she had appointed herself the good guy's assistant. He, too, was a great detective. The Captain had sent him along to take point. She was just keeping an eye on things out here while he went inside to break the case, and of course she would have his back if anything happened. That was her specialty. And then her heart sank down below her stomach. Oh no! Up the street there... It was the dark man! He was coming back! Her little heart, back in her chest again, hammered away as the man got closer. She stood and fretted as he went up the walk and up the steps. This was happening so fast! How could she signal to the good guy that danger was on its way? She wished absurdly that she had a tiny telephone she could carry around in her pocket, to call for help in situations like this one. But there was no such thing. She heard the door open and close. Dizzy with fear, she came from behind the bush, marching woodenly across the grass, one step and then another step and then another step. Her legs were trembling, but she made them keep going until she was on the walk and up the stairs and had her hand on the doorknob. It wasn't locked. Nothing at all went through her mind as she turned the knob very slowly and carefully, holding her breath. She found herself in a large, dark room that contained exactly one big couch covered in a dusty gray sheet. Something smelled funny. Like bad meat or an electrical fire. Just opposite the door she was now carefully closing was a flight of stairs leading to a landing on the second floor. It was so dark and gloomy up there. She couldn't see anything. "Oh Lord, Oh Lord, Oh Lord," she whispered. She could barely feel her legs at all, and even at that they seemed to be two or three feet away from her. Her hands just wouldn't behave at all. They jerked this way and that. She crept almost on tiptoe toward the couch, alive to any sound that might come her way. As she drew near, she saw that the couch had a big lump in it, underneath the sheet. A REALLY big lump. She chewed on her lower lip as she got closer. She didn't want to do this, but it was like walking around the block-she had to do it. She gripped a corner of the sheet. It felt coarse, not like the sheets she slept on. And she yanked, flinging it back. And what is this lying here? Her mind can't make sense of it for a moment, and she sees nothing but colors and lines and shapes that don't make sense, and when they finally do she bites down hard, turning a scream into a faint squeak. "Oh, oh, oh." She wanted to take back that moment, go just a little ways into the past and not see this. At that moment, from upstairs, comes a much less inhibited yell. "YAAAAH!" She stands straight, backing slowly into the gloom and listens to the sound of someone scrambling around on the wooden floor. And then footsteps of a person running. The good guy comes tearing around a corner and slams into the wooden railing running along the landing. Slams it and keeps going-the wood cracks and splinters and gives way, and the good guy sails down and hits the couch (don't look at the couch) and the couch turns over with him, and the object there rolls over on top of him. He yells again, clambers to his feet, dashes across the room and dives head on through a window! Just a moment later, the dark man charges down the stairs as well, glancing at her without slowing, but he SAW her, she knew he did. And she saw him, his full face. His eyes were very dark. He, too, was through the window before she fully processed what had happened. She was scared, but she knew it was a kind of scared that meant you were really very brave, even if you didn't feel brave and you were too chicken to look at the couch and what had been on it. She could not get herself to run, so she walked stiffly to the door. She emerged from the house into the black cold air outside, and shambled around a corner. As she did so, she saw a bright flash of light and all the air whooshed out of her lungs and she fell right on her butt in the grass. "Mom," she cried feebly. "Oh, Mom!" There was a pond and the dark man was standing in it and bright white sparks were everywhere and steam was coming up out of the water. The good guy was over by the side of the house, standing by a black metal box on the wall, and sparks were coming from this box too. In the pond, the dark man was shrinking. He sort of pitched forward into the water. There was a loud roaring sound in the girl's ears and her thinking began to slow down, and all she could do was walk even though she no longer knew where she was or what was going on or anything. The thoughts in her head got thinner and thinner as she walked and there were great holes in them where nothing could be seen and she walked like this for a period of time until a policeman found her and took her to the hospital and she remembered her name and the names of her parents and they were called to come get her. She was treated for shock and could not answer any questions because she did not remember anything. Shortly, she was released to the care of her parents. For the next few days her parents and even some policemen asked her questions, but she simply could not remember what had happened to her that night. She overheard some talk about a killer, about women being murdered, about a house burning down. She lay in bed all day, even though her aunt had offered her the couch in the living room so she could watch television. She could not get on the couch, though she did not know why. The idea of lying on the sofa made the skin on the back of head turn cold and sandpapery. When she started feeling a little better, the vacation was over. And it would be a long, long time before little Dana Katherine Scully and her family made another trip to Chicago.