He had said she would see him again, but those had just been words, idle hopefulness from a boy who didn't want to lose her, didn't want to leave another person behind. Then he had vanished in the haze of social services and court-ordered guardians. Kevin Cryder had gone on to a place away from prophecy and his lunatic father, away from deformed handymen and dire predictions, into a world of fourth grade--cursive, long division, kickball.

But now he was back.

Dana Scully stood next to the end table, listening to his voice on her answering machine, wondering how long it had been since she had last spoken to him. There had been a few letters right after she left, written in a ten- year-old's scrawl--"Dear Miss Scully, How are you? I am fine. I am living with a nice family now. I go to school at the same place I did when you were here. We are studying plant cells and it is fun. I miss you. Your friend, Kevin Cryder."- and an e-mail when his class learned about the internet, and a postcard when his foster family went to Florida, and she had answered them all happily and dutifully, but he had never called before.

He was older, now, thirteen or so. He sounded different on the machine, more mature, but also hesitant, as if he wasn't sure what he was doing. She remembered his voice, high and afraid, turning toward her in the hallway of a house he would never enter again: "are you the one that was sent to protect me?"

She had wanted to tell him yes. Yes, she was the one, his protector, his savior, but she couldn't. Listening to Kevin's subtly altered voice in the comfortable spring warmth of her living room, Dana remembered what she had thought in the instant that Kevin had asked for her protection: no, not me. Not me, but Mulder.

But Mulder hadn't believed.

For once, Mulder hadn't even wanted to believe and it was left to her, skeptic, doubter, scientist, to save Kevin. She had, but she wasn't sure how or why, and the moment of clarity she had had staring at the white arrows on a plastic recycling container had vanished into fear and confusion. But she had saved Kevin, and she had loved him in a muted way, and she still thought of him more and more often since Emily and those poor hunted girls. What would happen to a boy like Kevin in the world she knew now, a world where children were destroyed as a matter of course?

Scully sat in the yellow light of her table lamp, resting her chin on her hand. Although the tape had stopped, she still heard Kevin's voice: "Miss Scully, I think I need your help."

She could only imagine what Mulder would say when she told him. Kevin's case had been the beginning of the on-going . . . disagreement they had about religion, the first time that she had been foisted into the role of believer. Mulder hadn't even bothered to consider that Kevin might really be a stigmatic, and his dismissive attitude had continued through every case that bore even an hint of the miraculous in the divine sense. He hadn't considered that Kevin might be touched by God, just as he hadn't even heard her suggestion that those poor deformed girls might be something different, although normally he was so quick to pick up on the slightest allusion to the paranormal in her analyses.

And she couldn't say he was wrong. That was the worst part of his rejection: she didn't know the truth. She didn't want to argue in favor of seraphim and stigmatics and God's Hand, but she sometimes thought she might believe in them. Might want to, anyway and for some reason, Mulder didn't.

It frightened him, she thought, the possibility that there was a higher intelligence, a Being who could orchestrate all things. It would mean that Someone had done all of these things to him, taken his sister, made his parents pull away from him and from each other, left him alone. Most of all, Scully thought, proof of the existence of God would mean that everything wasn't Mulder's fault, and that probably frightened him more than anything else. What she didn't say to him, what she didn't admit to anyone but herself and her confessor, was that the idea of God frightened her, too.

Now, after Emily, after the vision she had seen last week, she felt the desire to talk to Kevin again, a sudden tug in her gut, an almost physical emptiness. She longed not for a miracle, but for human contact, for the touch of another person, someone who needed her. She remembered the feeling of his small hand in hers, the cup of his palm, the thin warm arcs of his fingers when he said goodbye. She wanted to feel that again. But Kevin was no longer a fourth grader, he was a teenager. He wouldn't want to hold her hand.

He did want to talk to her, though, about something that sounded important. He needed her help with something. He was asking her advice as . . . as a friend, perhaps. An older friend. An adult sister.

Scully looked at the clock. It was too late to call him now, after ten. Even if he wasn't in bed, it was late enough to annoy parents, foster or otherwise. She picked up the phone and dialed.

"Mulder."

"Mulder, it's me."

"What's up, Scully?"

"Kevin Cryder called me."

There was a pause. "Kevin Cryder?"

"The stig-"

"Yeah, sure, from Ohio, right? What did he want?"

"He left a message."

"Are you going to call him back?" There it was, the coolness in tone that she had been expecting since she mentioned Kevin's name. She paused, knowing her answer, but hesitating to say it.

"Why do you think he called?" Mulder asked when she did not speak.

"I don't know, Mulder. I guess I'll find out tomorrow."

"Let me know."

"Good night Mulder."

"Scully?"

"Yeah?"

"What are you wearing?"

"Good night, Mulder."

"Let me know," he repeated as she hung up. Somehow she had made the decision--she would talk to Kevin Cryder tomorrow. It was probably nothing, something about girls maybe, although the thought of Kevin being old enough to like girls made her feel lonely. She remembered the feeling of his thin boy's shoulders beneath her hands, wrapping him in a blanket after his mother died, knowing somehow that their relationship had changed. She had belonged to Kevin then, as a substitute, as something approximating a mother, and if he needed her, she would belong to him again.

She hit the rewind button and Kevin's voice drifted from the machine, thin and tinny in the still apartment.

"Hi, Miss Scully. This is Kevin Cryder. I called to say hi . . . I'm doing fine. School is okay . . . I guess I called because school really isn't, um, okay. I'm having some problems, I guess. I don't know why I'm telling you this but Nathan said maybe I should call you. . . Miss Scully, I think I need your help. Strange stuff is happening, and I think I need your help. Call me please. Okay, bye."

*****

That night, after erasing a boy's request for help from her answering machine, Dana Scully had a dream.

Kevin stood in the front yard of a white two-story house. Kids rolled past on bikes and in-line skates, skipped by with jump ropes. He was watching her as she approached, his eyes following her car as she cruised up in front of the picket fence.

Hi, Kevin, she said, but the words did not come out of her mouth, they came from her head. He smiled.

His smile changed, gradually, as if he were under water, and his finger reached toward the sky.

Scully looked over her shoulder and saw it, an inky blackness with eyes of gold, shapeless, and she was out of the car, running, sprinting through the gate, head down. If she could reach him first, she thought, if she could reach him first.

But she couldn't, and Kevin was swooped up in a tornado of hot wind with fangs or teeth, and Scully grabbed for him, catching only one white tennis shoe. The kids at the edges of the fence laughed and pointed. Missed him, missed him, now you have to kiss him, they cried. And she cried out, too, watching the shape recede in the distance.

I know you'll come for me, Kevin said, from within that darkness, from within the heart of evil.

She woke up sweating.

Go to Part 02/12