Episode Summary

Mulder and Scully encounter a delusional man who believes his boss may be a monster — and is willing to pay any price to prove it.

Episode Details

Cast

Guest Cast

Quotes

Supervisor: Yo, Gary! Dial and Smile, Gary. See, if you're not smiling, they can hear it. [The supervisor walks away. Nancy Aaronson looks over Gary Lambert's cubicle wall and mimics the supervisor]

Nancy Aaronson: If you're not smiling, they can hear it. Jerk. [Gary Lambert smiles]


Mulder: Why can't the Chicago field office take care of it?

Skinner: Because I'd prefer you did.

Mulder: Because the manifesto contains bizarre overtones? Claims of a... paranormal nature?

Skinner: It speaks of a monster stalking employees. Your insight into such claims should aid in assessing the threat if any posed by this person.

Mulder: Monsters? I'm your boy...


Mulder: I must have done something to piss him off.

Scully: What do you mean?

Mulder: Get stuck with this jerk-off assignment. Or have I finally reached that magic point in my career where every time somebody see Bigfoot or the Virgin Mary on a tortilla, I get called out of my basement ward to offer my special insight on the matter.

Scully: You're saying I a lot. I heard we. Nor do I assume that this case is just a waste of our time.

Mulder: Well, not yours any ways. There's no reason both of us should go to Chicago. I'll take care of it. [Mulder walks away]

Scully: Mulder?

Mulder: I'm Monster Boy, right?


Scully: [answering mobile phone] Scully.

Mulder: Hi. It's me. I need you to check on something.

Scully: What?

Mulder: It's a phrase, Hiding in the Light. It's on this tape that I'm looking into.

Scully: On the case It's A Total Waste Of Time?

Mulder: Yes, and I didn't say that it wasn't. To hide in the light, hiding in the light, some form of that. I think it's on an old case file somewhere that I got hidden away.

Scully: Which one? There's hundreds.

Mulder: I'm not sure, but I appreciate it.


[Nancy Aaronson has returned from her chat with Greg Pincus, but to Gary Lambert she looks like a zombie]

Nancy Aaronson: See? Nothing to it.


Mulder: [answering mobile phone] Mulder.

Scully: Hiding in the Light. That was a phrase spoken by one Gerald Resnick to a Lakeland, Florida police investigator on August 9th 1992.

Mulder: What was he describing?

Scully: Well Mr Resnick was a Deacon of his local church and apparently he was concerned that there was an evil presence amongst his fellow parishioners and that he alone was aware of that fact.

Mulder: Was he trying to warn them?

Scully: Not as such, he showed up for Mass one Sunday with four handguns. He began wounding people saying the afflicted wouldn't bleed. He committed suicide a week later in his cell.

Mulder: Scully at the risk of you telling me I told you so, I think it's time for you to get down here and help me.

Scully: I told you so.


Gary Lambert: [holding gun to Mulder] What are you doing here?

Mulder: Applying for a job.

Gary Lambert: [laughing] Oh man, did you come to the wrong place.

Mulder: I get that.


Gary Lambert: [answering Mulder's mobile phone] Dial and Smile!


[Before the SWAT team shot Gary Lambert they cut the lights and Mulder saw Greg Pincus' true form]

Gary Lambert: Now you know.


Mulder: There was a reason the phrase hiding in the light seemed so familiar to me. I found it, or variations of it, in five other X-Files. Hiding in plain view, hiding in the open, lurking in the open, all to describe some sort of manifestation of evil which goes unnoticed by everyone except the claimant in each case.

Scully: Have you slept?

Mulder: Seven cities in all, dating back ten years. VinylRight has offices within 50 miles of four of those cities. Greg Pincus was worked for VinylRight for — guess for how long? — ten years.

Scully: What exactly is it you think you have here?

Mulder: What if Gary Lambert was right?

Scully: Mulder you're not serious?

Mulder: Just bear with me for a moment. I mean what if such a creature existed that could camouflage itself by clouding the minds of its victims. There are antecedents for it in nature, right, in the insect world — Mantids for instance. They're said to hypnotise their prey.

Scully: No.

Mulder: What if it could induce a visual hallucination, a sort of temporary conversion disorder.

Scully: Well what you're describing would be more like some kind of visual agnausea, an inability to recognise what's before one's eyes.

Mulder: Only Gary Lambert could see through it somehow, as could the others. Maybe because of some heightened adrenalin level or maybe just because he knew where to look somehow.

Scully: Mulder, he was disturbed.

Mulder: Yeah, but did he see it because he was disturbed, or was he disturbed because he saw it?

Scully: He was mentally ill. His monster was a sick fantasy, a product of his dementia.

Mulder: I saw it too. Does that make me disturbed? Demented? Does that make me sick too?


[Gary Lambert has a marked map on his wall]

Agent Rice: What's this about?

Mulder: Lambert was tracking his boss' movements over the years.

Agent Rice: Stalking him.

Mulder: Gathering evidence.


Scully: Let's start with the photos. In fact, let's just do the photos. External exam only.

Medical Assistant: This guy came a long way just to have his picture taken.

Scully: Knock yourself out.


Medical Assistant: Judging from the corpse's resolved rigour and fixed lividity, as well as the decompositional bloating, I'd place the time of death between 48 and 72 hours.

Scully: No. This man died late yesterday afternoon.

Medical Assistant: Are you sure?

Scully: Absolutely.

Medical Assistant: It sure looks to me like he's been dead longer than that.


Skinner: Agent Mulder, think very carefully about the next words that come out your mouth.


[Mulder is strapped to a hospital bed]

Mulder: Five years together Scully. You must have seen this coming.


Mulder: You have to be willing to see.

Scully: I wish it were that simple.

Mulder: Scully, you have to believe me. Nobody else on this whole damn planet does or ever will. You're my one in five billion.


Nurse: Sleep tight. Don't let the bedbugs bite.


Mulder: What did you tell him? [Skinner]

Scully: The truth, as well as I understand it.

Mulder: Which is?

Scully: Folie à deux, a madness shared by two.

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