X-Files: Resurrection
About 8 years ago Amazon Pub asked me to write a short X-Files novel for one of their programs that never quite got off the ground. I wrote this one is a quick two-week sprint. They loved it, accepted it, and even edited it. In the end however, it didn’t see the light of day since the Zon and Fox Studios couldn’t come to a licensing agreement. But I still have this little orphaned novel for all you X-Files fans out there.
Here’s the first chapter for FREE. The rest will be available to paying subscribers. The minimum payment is just $5.00 to subscribe and to get the rest of this pulse-pounding thriller and more like them.
For now, here’s the first chapter for FREE as my gift:
1.
FBI Headquarters
Washington, DC
7:01AM
I was sitting inside the Acting Deputy Director’s office staring down at my reissued badge, wondering once again how it managed to sneak its way back into my possession. I locked eyes on gold plating that shone brilliantly in the overhead lighting, like the lights on an unidentified flying object as it skips its way over the horizon on a sunny afternoon, and I felt a shiver run up and down my spine.
“I’m backkkkk,” I whispered in imitation of that little girl who stared into the fuzzy television in Spielberg’s Poltergeist, my clean-shaven face, and still thick, but admittedly thinning, black hair reflected in the badge.
In the silence of a square-shaped office that was devoid of paintings or wall ornamentation other than a framed photo of our present commander-in-chief (a man who, at present, graduated high school the same year I did), I ran my thumb over my embossed name: Fox Mulder and somehow my entire life flashed before my eyes. A life that began not with my biological birth necessarily, but with the alien abduction of my sister from her bed in the suburban house we grew up in. It then continued with the disappearance of my father and moved on to my training at the FBI Academy in Quantico, sped its way on to my heading up a basement program called The X-Files in which I was expected to investigate all matters of the paranormal but for which my life was nearly extinguished several times over. Extinguished by a “syndicate” of agents who established the X-Files in the first place.
I guess, in the end, the Syndicate never expected me to tell the truth as I saw it. I guess they never wanted to believe in me as much as I wanted to believe in the existence not only of extraterrestrials but also in the possibility that the supernatural exists; that the evidence of another dimension is all around us on a daily basis. All you had to do was open your eyes and see it. But then, what I found out the hard way is that secret factions of our government will go to extraordinary lengths to make you see only what they want you to see. Because, after all, our national security depends upon it.
Mulder the cynic.
But then, as the chief agent (and only agent at present) to head up the reopened X-Files, it was my job to be a cynic. But also a believer. Call me Agent Yin and Yang.
The doors opened abruptly, breaking me out of my spell. In walked a tall, thin man of African-American descent by the name of Alvin P. Kersh. Kersh sported black, square-shaped eyeglass frames and a neatly trimmed gray beard, which did little to hide his permanent scowl, a seemingly absolute requirement of the position. I hadn’t run into him much since my return to the bureau, but I knew that he was recently divorced, living alone in a one-bedroom apartment near the Watergate, and only serving in the position as deputy temporarily while another, more major assignment came his way. Said major assignment didn’t seem to be arriving any too quickly which, when taken together with his living situation at home, might have served as the source of his, let’s call it, sourness.
He went around his desk, slapped a manila folder onto the desktop, and plopped himself hard into his swivel chair. Excuse me, not his swivel chair, per se. The U.S. government’s swivel chair.
“For moi?” I said, reaching across the desk for the file.
“Dispense with the jokes, Agent Mulder,” he said. “I’m not in the mood, and you’re still on probation.”
“I’ve been a G-Man for twenty years, sir,” I said. “Probation is about as interesting to me these days as masturbation.”
I was looking for a laugh here. You know, between guys. But he just stared into me with steely gray eyes and that robotic clenched mouth.
“You know, Mulder,” he said after a beat, “I was warned about you several times over by people in the know who claim that you haven’t changed one bit.”
“Changed what, sir?”
“The fact that you are an insufferable asshole born with an impenetrable stubborn streak which you wear like a suit of armor.”
I smile.
“Fits the FBI field profile perfectly, I should say.”
For a split second, I think I see a crack in his lips, perhaps the slightest hint of a smile like he’s purposely holding it back. But then I realize I’m looking for something that ain’t gonna happen anytime soon.
I raise up the file from off my lap.
“I assume I hold in my hands my assignment du jour.” I unclasp the folder, and pull out an eight-by-ten color glossy photo of a boy. A naked, dead boy laid out on a stainless steel gurney down inside your garden variety morgue. “What’s this?” I said.
“James ‘Jimmy’ Gardner,” he answered. “Eight years of age, originating from Montpelier, Vermont. Supposedly the late son of Scientology parents. Kid was dying rapidly of cancer. Both abdominal and pancreatic. The folks wouldn’t invest in a medical cure because of their religion, which is their God-given right.”
“Betcha L. Ron Hubbard never had to suffer pancreatic cancer without an Advil.”
“Sad as this sounds, however, it’s not the cancer that got the little boy.”
“So if cancer didn’t get him, how’d he die?”
“I’m getting to that.”
“Sorry. Just trying to cut to the chase. I’m trying to figure out why a dead little boy would constitute an X-File.”
“The boy was discovered yesterday morning buried in the ice on a small lake up in Albany, New York.”
“Kind of far from home, wouldn’t you say, sir? Relatively speaking, of course.”
“Indeed, Agent Mulder. Guess that’s why they brought us G-Men in.”
Now, for the first time, Kersh cracked a slight semblance of a smile. Or perhaps upon closer inspection, I was mistaken. In any case, I decided to remain straight-faced. Just to bust his steel balls.
“So why so far away from home?” I pushed.
Kersh shook his head.
“Don’t know. His body was found by a local. A fifty-two-year-old native Iroquois male who goes by the name of Charlie Bear.”
“Iroquois Indian,” I said. “How exotic.”
“Yes, exotic. Only thing is, our Mr. Bear has himself a rap sheet for kidnapping. Did a stint in Green Haven Maximum Security Prison for manslaughter after one of the teenaged hitchhikers he picked up was found dead from strangulation in the woods behind his trailer in an Albany suburb.”
I stared down at the photo of the dead kid. What’s the old saying about death? The dead look really dead when they’re dead. The child in this photograph was no exception.
“So I take it the local cops at the Albany Police Department suspect the Indian, excuse me . . . Native American, of kidnapping and murder? Still not seeing this as an X-File.”
Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out a small handful of sunflower seeds, and popped one into my mouth, cracking the shell with my front teeth. I picked out the now broken shell with my index finger and thumb, and tossed it into the waste basket set beside Kersh’s desk.
“Can you not do that in here?” he begged.
“At least it isn’t a cigarette.”
Flashing through my mind was a vision of the now very dead Smoking Man who used to sit in on every one of my meetings with then Deputy Director Skinner. The Smoking Man tried to kill me and most certainly killed my father while trying to bury the facts behind my sister’s extraterrestrial abduction. The Deputy Director became a most valued confidant to me and my on-again/off-again partner in the department, Dana Scully.
Ever the obedient agent, I stuffed the seeds back into my jacket pocket.
“My guess is I’m going to Albany,” I said.
“Your guess is correct. I want you to find out how that kid ended up buried in the ice some two hundred miles away from home and why. You can go over the rest of the informational packet on the plane. It leaves in an hour. There’re two electronic vouchers inside the packet.”
I was just about to mention once again how none of this sounded like an X-File when there was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” Kersh barked.
The door opened and in walked a short but well-constructed strawberry blond with bright blue eyes. The aforementioned Dana Scully. That explained the second electronic ticket.
Standing, I looked her up and down, taking notice of how her navy blue pants suit fit smartly in all the right and tight places. Naturally, as a professional colleague, I wasn’t supposed to be noticing any of this. But then, Scully and I had had our flirtatious attractions before. Some of them even led to a serious encounter or two and, for a time, a full-blown relationship. But physical attraction or no physical attraction, I felt a special love for her like no other. It was a love that soared beyond the bounds of badge, body and shared baggage. It was an unexplainable but very tangible love that these days went almost entirely unacknowledged, but that we bore for one another regardless.
“Good to see you back on the job, Scully,” I said. “They must be paying you beaucoup bucks for you to willingly handcuff yourself to me once more.”
She smirked until said smirk turned into a pout. A cute pout.
“Don’t get the wrong idea, Mulder,” she said walking into the office, the door closing on its own behind her. “I’m strictly freelance, and I have a soft spot for kids. Especially a sick child like the one we’re about to investigate.”
“Not much to investigate,” I said. “Considering the kid’s dead and gone.”
Scully stood beside me and nodded at Kersh. He nodded back.
“You keep asking me why this is an X-File, Agent Mulder,” the Acting Deputy Director said, “and now that Agent Scully is present, it’s time you know.”
“Wow,” I said. “How exciting.”
Kersh shot me a look. I felt the hard heel on Scully’s leather pump stab me in the shin.
“Judging by the amount of ice that had to be cut through in order to free the body, it’s estimated that little Jimmy Gardner spent seventy-two hours underneath the ice. That is, according to Albany physicians whom you will no doubt consult with, Agent Scully.”
“Maybe he was already dead when he was tossed into the lake,” I suggested.
He shook his head.
“Hard to tell, but I don’t think so. Neither do the pathologists or any of the medical personnel who’ve examined him.”
“So what’s the problem with the case? What makes it an X-File, sir?”
Pushing his eyeglasses back up onto the crown of his nose with his right index finger, Kersh pursed his lips, crossing his lanky arms over his chest.
“His cancer is completely gone,” he said.
“Nothing showed up when he was autopsied?” Dana posed.
He shook his head.
“The child hasn’t been autopsied, Agent Scully.”
“Wait a minute,” I broke in. “I don’t understand. All suspicious deaths get autopsied. It’s standard operating procedure in pretty much every state in the union.”
“Excellent, Agent Mulder, you sound like a real FBI agent . . . a real G-Man. But this case is different in one important aspect. And that one important aspect is what makes this an X-File.”
“Might we ask what that aspect is, sir?” Scully begged.
For the first time since I entered his office ten minutes before, Kersh cracked a genuine, honest-to-goodness smile. What a bestselling novelist might call an ironic smile.
“After spending three days under the ice on a frozen lake,” he exhaled, “little Jimmy Gardner is not only cancer-free. He’s very much alive.”
________________________
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