8ABX14 This is not Happening

Scully: Hi.

Doggett: Hi.

Scully: You said on the phone you'd received something urgent.

Doggett: You're right, I did. And I think it's really important you got right down here, Agent Scully. Thanks.

Scully: You going to tell me what it is?

Doggett: I passed it on to AD Skinner. I'd like for him to tell you.

---

Scully: What? What is it?

Skinner: Let's go into my office. [They enter Skinner's office]

Scully: All right, what's going on here?

Skinner: A report came in last night from Montana. About a UFO encounter.

Scully: What kind of encounter?

Skinner: A young man chased a bright object flying low across the sky. Tracked it all the way to a big field where the UFO disappeared... but where he claimed he saw an alien.

Scully: Assistant Director, I've got drawers full of reports that begin just like that. Are you going to tell me what's so important about this case?

Skinner: Young man's named Richie Szalay. UFO nut from Bellefleur, Oregon. You and Agent Mulder met him out there last spring.

Scully: Are you trying to tell me this has something to do with Mulder?

Doggett: He's trying to tell you that it might.

Skinner: Richie Szalay didn't find an alien last night. He found a woman. A woman whose name you will remember — Teresa Hoese.

Scully: Teresa Hoese was the young mother who was abducted the night before Agent Mulder was.

Skinner: And who was returned last night.

Scully: Returned?

Skinner: Hanging onto life by a thread.

---

Dr Desai: Who is Mr Skinner?

Skinner: I'm Skinner. You Dr Desai?

Dr Desai: I was just told you were on your way. That you flew out here all the way here from Washington, DC.

Skinner: Yeah, we're here to see Teresa Hoese.

Dr Desai: I know. I just wish someone would tell me these things because this woman is in no condition...

Scully: What is her condition?

Dr Desai: She's circling the drain. Twelve years, I have never seen anything near this level of mistreatment.

Doggett: Doctor, it's important we see the victim and talk to her if we can about what happened.

Dr Desai: Just promise me, whoever did this, you guys will do everything in your power to catch them. [He leads them into an intensive care room] By rights, this young woman shouldn't even be alive. The medics said she asked for her baby last night but she hasn't said a word otherwise. I suspect it's all she's holding on to. What's upsetting is... it's almost like someone was experimenting on her.

Skinner: What exactly did they do to her?

Dr Desai: Inside her cheeks there's tissue damage in a linear pattern. Her chest was cut into and organ tissue in her abdomen's scooped away. In the x-rays I see damage to the soft palate.

Scully: In the x-rays, did you see, um... anything else? Foreign objects.

Dr Desai: I'm not sure what you mean.

Scully: Little pieces of metal. Implants.

Dr Desai: No, I didn't. [A pair of uniformed officers enter the room]

Uniformed Officer: There was an Agent Doggett requesting a police report. [Doggett takes the file from the officer and glances through it]

Doggett: You're welcome to stay here and discuss foreign objects but... looks like we got a suspect.

---

Doggett: Richie Szalay?

Richie Szalay: Yeah?

Doggett: Richie? [Doggett opens the motel door and enters with Scully and Skinner]

Richie Szalay: Yeah.

Doggett: John Doggett. I'm an FBI Agent. This is Agent Scully, Assistant Director Skinner, our boss. You mind if we come in?

Richie Szalay: Dude, you're, you're already in. [to Scully] But, I know you. Do I know you?

Scully: You do... Richie. From Oregon. We met late last spring, you remember?

Skinner: Richie, if you live in Oregon... what are you doing in Montana?

Richie Szalay: My buddy, Gary, right? He was abducted. [to Scully] Right before your partner. I came looking for him.

Doggett: So, you just came out here on a lark?

Richie Szalay: No. I was following the news.

Doggett: The news?

Richie Szalay: All, all that's in the last two weeks. Yeah, I go on these Internet chat rooms to talk about sightings and junk. After Oregon there wasn't a whole lot but then all of a sudden in Montana... I never... I never thought I'd find Mrs Hoese like that. Not in a million years.

Doggett: Richie, when you found that woman's body you said you saw somebody with her. You told the police it was an alien. You know what a moulage casting is, Richie? It's what the cops take when they find shoe prints. They do these plaster castings and the ones they got from the field that night were from 9½ Nikes. You ever hear of an alien in Nikes?

Richie Szalay: Doesn't mean it wasn't.

Doggett: Did it ever occur to you that it wasn't an alien but a man?

Richie Szalay: Then what about his spaceship?

---

Scully: Agent Doggett? What was that in there?

Doggett: That was pressing a witness to get to the truth.

Scully: You refuse to believe that anything other than a man could have done this. Could have done what we saw to that woman in the hospital.

Doggett: It's not worth arguing about. The point here is to find Mulder.

Scully: And for months, we have been looking for a break, which is what we've got here.

Doggett: What we've got is hope. But let's be honest, Agent Scully, about what no one wants to say. Bad as you want to find Mulder, you're afraid to find him, too.

---

Scully: What if he's dead? I'm sorry. I just had a bad dream.

Skinner: Let me get some clothes on.

---

Scully: I once had a talk with Mulder about starlight. How it's billions of years old. Stars that are now long dead whose light is still travelling through time. It won't die, that light. Maybe that's the only thing that never does. He said that's where souls reside. I hope he's right.

Skinner: If you're trying to prepare yourself I want you to stop. Nothing says that we're going to stumble over him in some field. Nothing says he won't be fine.

---

Night Nurse: May I help you, sir?

Dr Desai: Yes, I want to have a patient transferred. Teresa Hoese.

Night Nurse: To be transferred?

Dr Desai: To another facility. I'd like to get her ready as soon as we can.

Night Nurse: Okay.

---

Scully: Did you find her?

Doggett: No.

Scully: No? I don't understand. You called us all the way out here.

Doggett: To get another point of view.

Scully: Another point of view? We have a patient missing, Agent Doggett.

Doggett: You should just hear her out.

Scully: Hear who out?

Doggett: Her name's Monica Reyes. I worked a case with her once.

Skinner: She's FBI?

Doggett: Yeah. She's got some expertise I thought we might take advantage of.

Scully: Expertise in what?

Doggett: She's got her master's in religious studies. Her specialisation is ritualistic crime.

Scully: Ritualistic crime? Are we working the same case here?

Doggett: Agent Reyes. Assistant Director Skinner, Agent Scully... Monica Reyes.

Agent Reyes: Hi. Beautiful country out here. [She crushes out a cigarette] I know it's not very FBI of me, but I'm really trying to quit. So, Agent Doggett's been taking me through the case. Interesting.

Scully: Interesting?

Agent Reyes: What do you think happened?

Scully: Isn't that what you're here to tell us?

Agent Reyes: Oh, I have my own thoughts. It's just, what we think happened and what actually happened aren't always the same thing, but not altogether insignificant, either.

Scully: I'm sorry, this feels like therapy.

Agent Reyes: What happened being different from what we want to have happened.

Scully: What who wants to have happened?

Agent Reyes: Well, I'm told this case involves you.

Scully: It may involve someone close to me. Can we stick to the facts, please?

Agent Reyes: Well, it's pretty clear that the woman who was found out here did not inflict her own injuries. That she was dropped here by someone and whoever it was cared about her enough not to kill her.

Scully: Did you happen to know the peculiar nature of her injuries?

Agent Reyes: Yes. They were peculiar, but not altogether different from your typical cult ritualistic abuse.

Skinner: Agent Reyes, we're dealing with abductions here... not by any cult.

Agent Reyes: Okay. Good. I mean, if it's not.

Scully: But you think that it is.

Agent Reyes: Well, I go on what I know, of course but I try to stay, you know, open.

Scully: So, what do you think happened?

Agent Reyes: Well, I'm told that Agent Mulder and the other people who were taken were true believers. People 100% convinced in the abduction phenomenon.

Skinner: If this is about these people staging their own abductions...

Agent Reyes: No, it's about people coming together. Like minds as a group.

Scully: So you're basically saying that Agent Mulder has joined some sort of UFO cult.

Agent Reyes: Call it a group.

Skinner: For what?

Agent Reyes: Well, we've all heard the news stories about transport to a mothership, the idea of a giant motherwheel. The whole Heaven's Gate thing.

Scully: I see.

Doggett: It'd make sense. The leader of the cult leaves this woman out here to die. Learning she's still alive he comes back to kidnap her again for fear of exposure. It'd make sense, too that if we find this guy, maybe we find Mulder.

Scully: Are you asking me to believe this?

Agent Reyes: No. That's not what I said. I don't think he left her to die. I don't think she's dead.

Scully: Based on what?

Agent Reyes: Nothing, really. It's just a feeling.

[Scully walks away, Doggett follows]

Doggett: What are you walking away for? It makes some kind of sense.

Scully: I'm glad you agree with her, Agent Doggett, because I'm not even sure that she agrees with you. Nor has she made any sense for me of how the doctor who removed Teresa Hoese from the hospital last night seems, by all accounts, to have been in two places at once.

Doggett: I know where you're going with this, Agent Scully, but if you're going to tell me this is another alien bounty hunter this is where we part company.

Scully: Enjoy your new company."

---

Absalom: How is she?

Jeremiah Smith: We were almost too late. [He places his hand on Teresa Hoese's forehead and heals her]

---

Agent Reyes: Oh, hi.

Scully: I thought you'd be out combing the hills with Agent Doggett.

Agent Reyes: I'm on my way out to see him. I just wanted to see film on this woman's injuries — Teresa Hoese.

Scully: Is there something you're looking for, Agent Reyes, in particular?

Agent Reyes: Implants, or signs of them.

Scully: Implants? I don't understand.

Agent Reyes: Metallic implants. Placed in the body, oftentimes in the nasal cavity. Sometimes made of bone or cartilage, making detection a little more difficult.

Scully: Yeah, I'm well aware of how they work.

Agent Reyes: You said you didn't understand.

Scully: I don't understand your interest in what is commonly considered evidence of alien abduction as a disbeliever in that phenomena.

Agent Reyes: I'm not a disbeliever.

Scully: Excuse me. I'm very confused. I know what I heard and I heard you say that what we're dealing with here is nothing more than a UFO cult.

Agent Reyes: There's the confusion. I still believe that, but it doesn't mean I don't believe in the phenomena.

Scully: You believe in extraterrestrials?

Agent Reyes: Let's just say I don't not believe. As I said, I try to stay open.

Scully: What is it you specialise in again? Ritualistic crime?

Agent Reyes: Right. Satanic ritual abuse. Or, I should say claims of it. We never found any hard evidence.

Scully: We should talk sometime.

Agent Reyes: Not that I don't believe in it. I was something of a black sheep in the field office in New Orleans... because of my beliefs.

Scully: And what beliefs are those

Agent Reyes: I just have certain spiritual notions. I believe there are energies in the universe. It might sound kind of cosmic, but I think I'm sensitive to them. I mean, I get these feelings.

Scully: And do you have any feelings about Agent Mulder?

Agent Reyes: I don't know Agent Mulder. And I don't have any feelings about him. But I am feeling your fear. And fear's not going to help you find him or anyone else. Maybe you can try and stay open, too.

---

Scully: [to recorder] Examination of victim, Gary Edward Cory, reveals cuts and abrasions from ligature or binding devices, accompanied by distal and proximal bruising, radiating in a symmetrical pattern, around the ankles, the wrists... and the face.

[Richie Szalay, accompanied by an officer, enters the examination room]

Richie Szalay: Oh my god, Gary.

Scully: You can go now, Richie. They just need you to sign a form.

[Richie Szalay leaves and Scully starts to cry silently]

Skinner: Dana...

Scully: I'm okay. There's work to do here.

---

Agent Reyes: You're hurting for her, I know. Agent Scully.

Doggett: I don't know how she's doing it in there. With everything she's feeling. What she's afraid of.

Agent Reyes: You know all too well.

Doggett: Let's leave the past in the past.

Agent Reyes: It was your fear, too. Those three days we looked for your son. The fear of finding what we did. I understand. That's why you're so determined to find Mulder alive.

Doggett: It's why I can't stand here and listen to all this mumbo jumbo about spaceships.

Agent Reyes: I saw what I saw, John. I'm not going to lie to you. But whatever it was, it led to this. It's the man I saw in the field. He goes by the name Absalom. A religious zealot who escaped a shoot-out in Idaho. Where he was the nominal leader of a doomsday cult who believed aliens would take over the world at the millennium. Disgraced when they didn't, he fled and tried a more ecumenical scam: credit card fraud. I ran the plate on the pickup truck. It's registered to a farm about an hour from here.

---

Absalom: I said I can't explain why it happens. Or how. Only where.

Doggett: I got 46... of your followers, rounded up out there at your compound. You make me go to them for a straight answer, it's only going to make it worse for you.

Absalom: How many times can I tell you?

Doggett: Night's early. Coffee's hot.

Absalom: The ships come in, drop the abductees, all messed up. I go and get them, so I can help them.

Doggett: Just like you helped Teresa Hoese, when you left her for dead?

Scully: Agent Doggett. [to Absalom] You say that these abductees are returned with severe injuries. But that doesn't fit the pattern of any alien abduction model.

Absalom: That's what I'm trying to explain. I predicted there would be an alien invasion at the Millennium. I was right, it turns out. 'Cause that's when this all started.

Scully: Sir... given the criminal charges against you, you couldn't be a less credible witness, so stop trying to validate your theories and just give us the truth.

Absalom: I'm telling you the truth. I only want to help these people.

Scully: So these video cameras that you have around your compound — how do they help?

Absalom: Abductees... live in fear of being taken again. The cameras give them a sense of security.

Doggett: Or makes them afraid to leave.

Scully: Do you have videotape of how you happened to heal Teresa Hoese?

Absalom: No.

Scully: I asked you to give me the truth. Do you have videotape of this man? [She hands him a copy of Mulder's ID photo, Absalom shakes his head]

---

Skinner: He's hiding something.

Agent Reyes: Yeah, that's for sure.

---

Agent Reyes: I reviewed these tapes from the compound. There are some things here I want you all to see.

[Part of the video shows Jeremiah Smith and Absalom loading a body into the back of a truck]

Skinner: They've got a body in there.

Scully: Who is it?

Agent Reyes: You can't tell from this angle.

Scully: Well, then where's another angle?

Agent Reyes: This is the only angle I could find.

Scully: Wait a minute. Stop it. That man. I know that man.

Agent Reyes: Good, because here he is again. [She advances the film showing Jeremiah Smith entering one of the buildings]

Skinner: Who is he?

Scully: His name is Jeremiah Smith. Agent Mulder knew him. He believed that he had the ability to heal people.

Doggett: What do you mean, heal people?

Scully: Like he did Teresa Hoese.

Agent Reyes: Well, whoever he is take a look at this.

[On the tape, Jeremiah Smith passes through a shadow and reappears looking like Doggett]

Doggett: What the hell just happened?

Agent Reyes: That's what I'd like to know.

Scully: Wow. That's still Jeremiah Smith.

Doggett: The hell it was. That's me, and I never even went in that building.

Scully: Exactly. We have to get back out there.

---

Scully: FBI. Where is he? Jeremiah Smith. Look, I know he's here. Jeremiah Smith. I need to speak with him. You — in the back. Step out. Come with me. [He follows her into a room] Take a seat. Are you Jeremiah Smith?

Nike Man: No, I...

Scully: Did you heal these people?

Nike Man: No.

Scully: Did you heal Teresa Hoese? Look, I know who you are. [Somebody knocks at the door]

Agent Reyes: Agent Scully. I'll be right outside.

[Scully turns back to the Nike Man and gasps when she sees Jeremiah Smith]

Jeremiah Smith: You're going to expose me. You're putting people in danger — Abductees all over the country. I save them. I'm the only one.

Scully: Where's Mulder?

Jeremiah Smith: You came crashing in here. I was trying to help him, too.

Scully: Where is Mulder? [The door opens]

Skinner: You'd better come with us.

Jeremiah Smith: You must protect me.

[Scully leaves with Skinner and Agent Reyes]

Scully: What is it?

Skinner: It's Mulder.

---

[A group of agents are standing around a body. Doggett intercepts Scully and physically restrains her from going to the body]

Scully: Where is he?

Doggett: Agent Scully, he's over there.

Scully: How bad is he? How bad is he? How bad is he hurt? [She breaks free and runs to Mulder's side] No. No. No. No. He needs help.

Doggett: It's too late.

Scully: He needs help!

Doggett: Agent Scully.

[Scully runs as fast as she can through the woods back to the compound. As she gets there, she pauses in shock at the sight of a brightly lit UFO over the compound. She runs toward the building, but is too late. Jeremiah Smith is gone]

Scully: Jeremiah. No... no. This is not happening! No!