Chapter Text
Part 1
Mulder leaned back into the car and tossed his coat across the driver's seat.
"It's warm out," he said.
Scully smiled. It was good today; the afternoon air was thick with the smell of loose, melting earth, and temperatures had hit fifty degrees. Mulder was caught up in this new case. It was almost possible to forget winter, to put February out of mind.
She climbed out of the car and looked at the large house. It sat hulking on the land, its paint greyed and peeling, its roof dripping pale water slowly down into the mud of the ground below. The snow that had fallen the night before was struggling to make its way down into the soil.
Scully moved to the tall, red-haired woman standing by the driveway.
"Anne O'Hara," the woman said, offering her hand, "I take it you're agent Scully?"
Scully smiled. "And this is my partner, Fox Mulder."
Anne O'Hara shook Mulder's hand and gestured toward the run-down house behind her.
"This is Dad's house - the house where I grew up. My son and I moved in, after my divorce. We thought we'd be able to save on rent, and take care of Dad at the same time..."
The woman paused and her voice cracked. Mulder touched her arm.
"Are you all right, Ms. O'Hara?"
She managed a weak smile, and shook her head slightly.
"I'll be fine," she said, though her voice was thick and heavy and her eyes were red. "I just want to find out what was going on."
"You believe that your father's death was not an isolated event?" Scully asked.
"Yes," the woman stammered. "Please, come in."
The house was warm and shadowed, its rooms lit by the thin filtered light coming through the afternoon haze. It was an old man's house, full of the smell of cigar smoke and old books and undusted shelves. A grandfather smell. From somewhere upstairs came the sound of a radio, shouting with static and something vaguely musical.
"Marilyn Manson," Mulder said, glancing around.
Anne O'Hara smiled and shrugged her shoulders.
"My son Josh," she said. "He's doing his English homework. He claims that the music helps him learn better. I don't argue with him anymore."
The woman moved to the window and looked out. Her face was hidden.
"Ms. O'Hara," Scully said, "You said on the phone that your father died of a heart attack. What would cause you to believe that this was anything other than a natural occurrence?"
O'Hara opened the doors of a tall wooden cabinet and shuffled through piles of papers and notebooks. She hoisted an unwieldy volume down from one of the shelves.
"My father never threw anything away," she said apologetically.
Dust flew into the light as the woman opened the book. The smell of age and time crept into the air.
"I think I need to start at the beginning," said Anne O'Hara. "My father was in the Navy in World War II."
Lining the dark pages of the album, tucked into tiny metal clips, were cracking black-and-white photographs. Scully smiled at the familiar monotony of the first shots. Ocean. Endless grey ocean from the side of a ship.
Anne O'Hara flipped past the opening images, and moved on to photographs of men sitting around a metal barrel playing poker, men posing with liferafts, men in their sleeping quarters. Scully was startled, as always, by the youth of the men. The soldiers of World War II should be fathers, little-league coaches, middle-aged politicians. Grandfathers. Not boys.
"Where did he serve?" Scully asked.
"South Pacific," said O'Hara. "First in Australia. But then New Guinea... the Philippines. Here...." She flipped a few more pages. There were more young men, standing among exotic-looking trees, posing with exotic-looking natives.
Mulder pointed to a photo of a young woman, her bare, pendulous breasts focused dead-center.
"I bet that was a hard one to explain to mother," he said.
"Yes, well, that's not one Dad kept around for us kids to see." Anne O'Hara smiled. "I don't think I knew this album existed it until I was twenty-one. But those men aren't the ones who matter, anyway."
The woman paged past photos of scenery and tents and one very large snake, until there was a gap in the continuum. Several pages were blank, and then, loose and alone, there was one last photograph. This one showed three men, shirtless and impossibly thin, squinting into the sun. They stood, their feet hobbled by leg-irons, their hands manacled together. The man on the left bore a huge gash on his cheek. The one in the middle was missing his front teeth. They looked small and ghostly amid the lush vegetation.
"That," said Anne O'Hara, pointing to the man in the middle, "Is my father."
"POW?" Mulder said.
"Yes. In the islands. They were liberated three weeks after the surrender of Japan. Ben Oak - he's the one on the right - came home with my father. They were shipped to San Francisco, and then sent to a rehabilitation hospital on the coast of New Hampshire. I'm not sure - Dad never spoke about it - but I think they were there for a long time."
The woman closed the album and sighed.
"After the war, my father stayed in touch with Ben Oak and some of the men he met during his recovery. They were close - like a family. A lot of them settled in the Northeast. I don't know... maybe they didn't have any homes to go to, or maybe they all just landed where they were tossed. Anyway, they stayed close. They used to have reunions, every summer. We kids got to know each other. And they were obsessive about writing letters to each other. That's why I know my father's death isn't normal."
Scully tilted her head questioningly.
"When my father died," said Anne O'Hara. "I tried to call one of the men - Dad's friend Samuel Jacobsen - to let him know. He lives about an hour from here. But when I made the call, Sam's daughter Joanna told me that her father had died just two days before. Undiagnosed cancer, is what they said. And then I got another call from Richie Arakelian. His father had died of a stroke - three weeks earlier. And Frank Ely was gone, too... he'd fallen down the stairs."
Mulder caught Scully's gaze, raised his eyebrows slightly. She managed a small shrug in return.
"Ms. O'Hara," she said in a calm voice, "We understand the trauma involved in losing a parent, but with men in this age group, the chances are..."
"Please," the woman said. "All those men were happy and healthy until two months ago. It doesn't make sense that they'd all die in such a short time. It has something to do with that hospital, with that group, with those reunions."
"Do you have any further evidence?" Scully asked.
"This has happened before. Men from the group, dying."
"Before?"
"When I was a girl. One summer they held the reunion at a campground in New York state. But some of the children weren't there: two fathers had died during the year. I remember it felt... strange. I was only about thirteen. Anyway... one night the rest of us were having a bonfire on the sand by the lake. A car drove up, and Mrs. Summering and Mrs. Johnson got out. They were crazy - screaming and saying crazy things. I remember Mrs. Summering especially. She kept shouting, 'You killed them. You killed them. And soon you'll die, too!' "
There was a lingering silence in the room.
"What happened then?" Scully finally asked.
"Nothing," said O'Hara. "We were scared. Someone's mother was crying. Someone's father came and got the two women out of there. I heard my mother arguing with my father, all night. But we never saw those women again. And no one ever brought the whole thing up. Until our fathers started to die. Then we remembered. And we want to know what's going on."
Scully took out her notepad and poised to write.
"All these men," she asked. "Did they all sail with your father?"
"No... At least, I don't think so. Some of them were in his crew. Some were in the hospital with him."
"Do you have the names and addresses of any of them? Know where we can contact them?"
"Most of them, I think... There's a box of letters upstairs, in the crawlspace over Josh's room. Like I said, Dad never threw anything away. And he was fanatical about keeping up with his correspondence."
"May we borrow the letters?"
"Certainly."
Anne O'Hara climbed quickly up the narrow wooden steps as Mulder and Scully followed. The shuddering sound of rock music was suddenly silenced as Mulder and Scully reached the top. A lanky teenage boy stood in the doorway of a room on the left.
"Josh, this is Agent Mulder and Agent Scully," said Anne O'Hara. "They're here about your grandfather."
The boy nodded slowly.
"From the FBI?" he asked.
"Yes," said his mother. "I hope your room is clean."
The boy shrugged.
Anne O'Hara pulled on a rope hanging from the hallway ceiling. A small stepladder folded down, and she clambered up it. Mulder started after her. Scully glanced down at her own high heels and short skirt.
"Um, Mulder..." she said.
"I'll handle this one, Scully," he said, smiling slightly.
"Thanks."
Scully glanced toward the boy, who was watching her intently.
"Working on your homework?" she asked.
The boy nodded.
"English?"
The boy nodded again, looked up at the crawlspace, and then shrugged.
"Poetry," he said.
"What's the assignment?" Scully asked.
The boy tossed his head slightly, and moved into his room. Scully looked through the doorway and smiled. Sweatshirts and socks lay scattered across the floor; CD boxes covered the bed. The boy looked back to Scully, and shrugged again.
"It's not so clean."
"Well, the FBI doesn't like to get involved in things like that," said Scully.
The boy reached to his desk and handed Scully a packet of papers, stapled together, with three holes punched in their left side. A bright purple cover read, "Winter Poems."
"We have to read all those poems and then write a report about the metaphor in one. What it's really about. I'm doing the first one."
Scully smiled and glanced down at the printed page in front of her.
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
"Robert Frost," Scully said. "I used to read that one when I was a little girl. I'll bet I haven't thought of it since senior English class."
"So what's it really about?" Josh O'Hara asked.
Scully smiled.
"That is the question. I remember we used to argue about it. Some people insisted that the narrator was talking about - "
But she was interrupted by the sound of heavy footsteps overhead, as Mulder emerged from the crawlspace, dirty and carrying a pile of cardboard boxes.
"I hope you're not allergic, Scully," he said, blowing a thick layer of dust into the air. "But I think these letters should give us as many names and addresses as we need to do a preliminary investigation."
"Good," Scully said. "And good luck on your homework, Josh."
She moved to hand the papers back to the boy. He shook his head.
"I've got another copy of that Robert Frost poem. You can keep the rest of them. I don't even want to think about them."
Scully smiled.
"Thanks."
They moved to the front door of the house. The shadows had grown longer.
"Thank you for taking the time to speak to me," said Anne O'Hara. "Is there any other information I can give you?"
Mulder nodded.
"I would like to know the specifics of your father's military service. Where he was captured, when he was released, the name of the rehabilitation hospital he was sent to..."
Anne O'Hara sighed and looked out across the lawn
"I don't know. I don't even know the year he was captured. Isn't that strange? All those summers, together, all those years with my father and his friends? You would think I'd know more about his life. But I... he never spoke about that time. I guess I didn't know him as a man... I guess I only know him as my father."
O'Hara turned and clutched her hands together.
"But now I need to know why he died."
Mulder hoisted three unwieldy cardboard boxes onto his desk. Scully fixed her gaze on him.
"Mulder," she said, "Don't you think it's likely that all those men died of natural causes? If they were in World War II, they'd have to be in their seventies or eighties."
"Well, I'll admit that they weren't very good insurance risks, Scully... But it is a pretty big coincidence, don't you think? Four men from such a close-knit group, dying within a month of each other? And those screaming women at the campground? Who knows?"
"Mulder... It's easy to try to fix blame when someone you love dies. Believing that there is a deliberate force at work gives the survivor a sense of purpose - it makes the loss seem less random and more meaningful. It would be like that for Anne O'Hara and her friends, and it would especially be like that for two young women who were left to raise families alone. I would hate to lead these people on. I would hate to feed their denial."
A silence from Mulder, for just the quickest moment. And then it was gone.
"I agree, Scully. But it can't hurt to poke around a little bit... read these letters." Mulder picked up a pile of envelopes and shuffled through them. "Besides, it's not often we get a chance to go through someone else's private mail."
Scully smiled slightly.
"Fifty years of baby announcements, gall bladder operations, and tax complaints?"
Mulder shrugged.
"Look on the bright side. It could be fifty years of scandalous gossip and indelicate indiscretions..."
"OK, Mulder... Look... you start with the indiscretions. I'll see what I can find out about these deaths. Give me the personal information of the men who've died."
Scully took the names and addresses, moved to her computer, and began to call up access to local newspapers. It was a tedious job. She slogged slowly through recent weeks, reading aloud to Mulder as she took notes on the pertinent obituaries.
"Hartford, Connecticut. Samuel A. Jacobsen, South Windsor florist and W.W.II veteran, died Wednesday after a sudden illness. Mr. Jacobsen was seventy-four years of age. He leaves behind three children, Joanna, John, and Alice... "
Scully continued on through two more obituaries. More of the same. Local men, local papers, local contributions. Scully shut down the program she was using and leaned back to rest her eyes. Mulder didn't look up from the page he was reading.
"This is strange," he said.
"What's that?"
"This letter... it's not from one person. It's a round robin, from a whole lot of men. Someone in Massachusetts started it out, but then there are comments by more and more people."
"Any good gossip?" Scully asked.
"Well, Pete's sister Miggy married that Harold Stevenson. Who'd have thought?"
"There. I told you there wouldn't be any scandals, Mulder. This is World War II we're talking about. All the soldiers were good and upright and true."
"Yeah... and now they're all dying suddenly."
"It's hardly an epidemic, Mulder. These obituaries don't sound in any way out of the ordinary. These are old men dying of the typical diseases of old age."
Mulder shrugged his shoulders and put down the letter in his hand. He fixed his eyes on Scully.
"OK... OK. Scully, I'm sorry. Look, it's late. Go home and get some rest."
His voice was deep and quiet, his eyes locked on hers. Scully shifted uncomfortably.
"And you?"
"I'm going to stay a while and read through some more of these. They're really kind of interesting... Cold war history."
Scully stood and picked up her coat. Mulder had read her tone; he was all concentrated inattention, now, impossibly absorbed by whatever piece of news he was reading. He'd be here all night trying to plow through the letters. Scully picked up a cardboard box and tucked it under her arm.
Two hours later, she lay in her bed, surrounded by the crackling, fading remainders of fifty years of correspondence. She scribbled the last entry on the branching flow chart she had drawn. It was a long, intricate sorting of names. She checked the clock. She picked up the phone, then set it down again.
She flipped the page over and realized that she'd been writing on the back of Josh O'Hara's poetry assignments. Winter Poems. She opened to the Robert Frost.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
She must have been nine or ten, the first time she read those words. It had been a sultry summer night, and winter had seemed far off and mysterious. Somewhere her mind still stored the image of that reading: the living room carpet, the thick red book lying open on the floor, the quiet of the house. The dark and the slant of the kitchen light falling across the pages of her book. The gentle fall of snow in the cold woods. Her father's voice calling her to bed.
The phone rang. She glanced at the clock. Two hours. It would be Mulder.
"Hi."
"Hi." Mulder's voice shook the poem loose from Scully's mind. "It's not too late, is it? Were you asleep?"
"Well, I am reclining, Mulder. But I was... I got involved in reading some of these letters."
"So did I, Scully. And I decided to locate those two women that Anne O'Hara spoke about - the ones who went crazy at the summer camp - to see what they had to say."
"Did you find them?"
"Just one. Mrs. Johnson seems to have disappeared into the mist of history. But I managed to track down Mrs. Susanna Summering Keaton, formerly of Watertown, New York, and now of Sitka, Alaska."
"And...?"
"And she claims that her husband died because of those letters you're reading."
"Because of the letters?"
"Yeah. Listen to this, Scully. Mrs. Keaton says that her husband died because he stopped writing to those other men - because Ben Oak made Stephen Summering part of his chain letter, and because Stephen broke the chain. And she says that Hal Johnson died because he came immediately after Summering in the chain."
Scully left a suitable period of bemused silence on her end of the phone.
"Mulder, you don't believe that..."
There was a pause.
"Have you ever considered chain letters, Scully?" Mulder asked.
"Only when I throw them out in my e-mail."
"Their history is fascinating... they've spread around the world as fast as written communication."
"It's not surprising, Mulder. They're just another form of gambling, and people have been finding ways to lose money since history began. Chain letters. Amway. It's all the same."
"But they're not all money-making schemes. Many of them are good-luck totems... modern versions of blessings sent from one village to another. Postal novenas."
Scully tilted her head slightly.
"With big warnings at the end that say, 'Pass this on or else?' "
"Well," said Mulder. "Maybe there is something to all those warnings. You know... 'Tom Sanders broke this chain letter and a week later he was crushed by a dumptruck.' "
"They're urban legends, Mulder. Ones that not even teenagers believe. Besides... these letters are downright boring. There's no hint of a threat in anything the men say. There is no 'or else.' Why would it be so important for them to pass on information about their remarriages and grandchildren?"
"I don't know... I don't know, Scully. But these men were returning from some very unusual circumstances. Have you read about the South Pacific? Do you know that many of the local peoples there remained largely out of contact with the outside world until they were forced into contact by the war?"
"Yes... but what does one thing have to do with another?"
"Well, maybe the men... learned something over there. Maybe they were obligated to stay in touch with one another. Maybe breaking the chain unleashed some sort of..."
Scully waited. Mulder didn't say it.
"A curse?"
Mulder maintained a voice of complete plausibility.
"Yes. A curse."
Scully sighed and stretched her neck. The bedside clock ticked.
"I suppose," she said at last, "That it might make sense psychologically. If the men believed that the letters had some ritual significance, they might create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Doom themselves with the power of their own expectations. These deaths could be due to psychogenic illnesses or accidents."
"A rose by any other name..."
Scully smiled into the telephone.
"So... did you get anything from the letters?" Mulder asked after a pause.
"Well I think I've found a pattern. We've got twenty-two men writing to each other. And there seems to be some sort of assigned rotation to the writing. All the letters originate with this Ben Oak, in Boston, and they all end up with Bill O'Hara... but there are a lot of gaps in the information. I think there must be other letters out there that followed some other rotation - that didn't end with Bill O'Hara. One of the other men must have them. Or maybe all of them have some."
"I think you're right. And Scully - did you say there were twenty-two names on your list?"
"Well, as of last summer, yes. That was before those four men died, of course. Eighteen, now. Why?"
"I've been working on reading the very oldest letters, the ones from the late forties, and there are forty-five men on the list I've compiled. Somewhere along the line we've lost twenty-three, even before the four recent deaths."
"Hardly surprising. Half of the men who survived World War II have died. And some might have just stopped writing."
"No, it's not surprising," Mulder said. "But... Well, we know that two men died the year Anne O'Hara was thirteen. I wonder if I can find out how they died. And how many of the others have died. There must be military records."
"Sounds like a good job for the morning, Mulder."
A soft chuckle came over the line.
"I'll stop reading about the case if you'll stop reading about the case."
Scully smiled into the phone.
"I've stopped. Actually, I was reading some poetry, Mulder."
"I've always said you were a renaissance woman, Scully."
And then a long silence.
Night, and the heavy, slow unwinding of things.
"Mulder."
"Yeah."
"I'll see you in the morning."