Title: THE SECRETS OF MULDER MANSION, Chapter 2
NOTES: The adventure continues to unfold...
Rating: M/K, 1/1, PG13
Disclaimer: Mulder and Krycek are not mine.
Feedback: Please! lumpj@hotmail.com
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The Secrets of Mulder Mansion, Chapter 2
Jessica Harris
12/29/00
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They both stared at his hand for a suspended moment, the red of the blood
dark in the light of Krycek's torch. Then Krycek tucked the flashlight
under his arm, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and carefully wiped the
blood from Mulder's knuckles, revealing unharmed flesh beneath. Mulder
flexed his hand experimentally, then met the other man's intense green eyes
with a sudden thrill of fear and said "But if I'm not bleeding..."
"Jonathan?!" Krycek exclaimed, then dropped Mulder's hand and took off up
the stairs. Mulder followed the sound of his rapid foot-steps, but before he
could catch up a door by the head of the stairs opened in his path and
Gertrude's large sleepy face looked out. "What's going on?" she asked. "I
heard running."
"I don't really know," said Mulder, looking over her shoulder to see where
Krycek had gone. "Jonathan was showing me the house, and we ended up over in
the West wing, and then Krycek - "
"Jonathan's fine," interrupted Krycek's low voice as he reappeared from the
end of the hallway, his pace more sedate this time, "except for the
splitting headache I suspect he'll have tomorrow. Looks like he took the
brandy to bed with him." His lips narrowed in disapproval. "He's out cold,
snoring like a rhinoceros."
"And why wouldn't Jonathan be all right?" asked Gertrude patiently, pulling
back her bushy hair.
"He was at the brandy again," said Krycek, rubbing his forehead, "and he
dragged Fox off into the west wing, then stomped away in a huff when I told
him he was being stupid. And then when we got back here, we found blood on
Fox's sleeve, and I thought - " he sighed tiredly. "Well, you remember that
Christmas when he fell down the stairs, right? And - " he stopped himself,
shook his head. " - it was just my first thought, that's all. Stupid,
really. It must have been a mouse the cats caught, or something of the
sort."
But Gertrude was looking seriously at the smudge on Mulder's sleeve, her
brow furrowed. "Maybe," she said. "But still, I think we'd better check on
everyone." And with that, she swept away, a large white shape in the gloom.
Mulder stood in silence beside Krycek. The dark-haired man leaned against
the newel-post at the top of the stairs, looking oddly shaken, his face pale
and drawn, hair falling untidily over his forehead. As Mulder watched, he
shut his eyes for a moment, and swayed a little, leaning precariously
towards the stairs.
"Careful!" said Mulder, and caught his arm. "Are you sure that you're all
right?"
Krycek's eyes snapped open, and Mulder let go of his arm at the strange mix
of feelings he saw in them. They held challenge still, but it was edged now
with that same puzzlement the man had shown earlier in the evening when
Mulder had protested Jonathan's venom. Krycek stared at him, then drew
breath as if to speak, but just at that moment Gertrude returned, face
grave. "I think we'd better gather everyone. The twins are missing."
* * *
Mulder sat in the living room, watching the others make their way
downstairs. They formed a strange procession. Gertrude's night-dress was
hardly distinguishable from her day-time garb, and the metres of white
fabric swirled around her ankles as she herded the sulking Lucinda before
her. Lucinda herself was bizarrely transformed, her hair coiled and twisted
and pinned in strange protrusions on her head, her face coated with
something glistening and faintly green, her thin arched eyebrows vanished
entirely. "Stop pushing me," she was complaining over her shoulder to
Gertrude, "I just wanted one minute to wash my face!"
Krycek followed behind them, with a dishevelled Jonathan in tow. Jonathan
was puffy-eyed, staggering, and clearly unhappy. He kept yanking his arm
from Krycek's grip, only to grab at him again as he stumbled over his own
feet. When he saw Mulder he looked suddenly shame-faced, and ceased
fighting, making an effort to stand straighter and smooth his hair. Last
came Alice, shrugging into a dark dressing-gown, and Mulder noted with
surprise that beneath it she was wearing a pink satin night-gown that
revealed an unexpectedly lush and voluptuous body.
"I'll get the Mellors," said Krycek as he delivered Jonathan to the bottom
of the stairs. The cousins milled about, settling themselves around the
room, all of them avoiding the small love-seat near the fire where the twins
had sat after dinner.
Mulder looked at the empty seat and shivered. Repelled by the blood on his
sleeve, he'd taken off his dressing gown and put it on the coffee table,
sleeve displayed for the others to see. Now the drafts of the room cut
effortlessly through his thin cotton pyjamas.
A heavy sweater was suddenly dropped in his lap, and he looked up to see
Krycek nod at him impassively before moving away and taking a seat in a
heavy straight-backed chair. Shivering again, Mulder pulled it on, half
grateful and half irritated at the man's silent gesture.
"I think we should search for the twins," announced Gertrude loudly once the
Mellors were seated.
"I don't know why you got us out of bed for that, said Lucinda petulantly.
"They're probably off somewhere setting up one of their nasty jokes, and - "
"Precisely," interrupted Krycek. "If they're up to their old tricks again,
they could very well be hurt. That blood had to come from somewhere in the
house."
"What do you mean 'nasty jokes'?" asked Mulder, and they all turned to look
at him.
"The twins had an unfortunate penchant for rather involved practical jokes,"
Gertrude finally said, when it became clear that no one else would answer.
"They could be rather ... cruel, really. But ingenious, and elaborate."
There was silence again, and finally Jonathan said grudgingly "well, I
suppose we'd better retrace our steps, Fox, and see what we can find."
* * *
The wind had picked up as they talked, and now, as Jonathan unsteadily led
them through the house, they could hear it howling around the roof-tops and
rattling the windows in their casements. The bats in the ball-room chittered
in agitation as they passed through, and in the decrepit solarium a pane of
glass blew in with a crash, making Lucy scream shrilly. And beneath it all
came the constant booming of the sea in the caves below, louder and louder
the closer they came to the deserted west wing.
Eventually they came again to the room with the canopied bed and obscene
painting. Krycek flicked on a dusty overhead light as they came through the
door, and its sudden illumination revealed what Jonathan's torch had not: a
puddle of blood that sat dark and sticky on the floor at the head of the
bed. The skirts of the bed were soaked with it, heavy and stained.
They all stared in frightened silence. The scene looked strangely theatrical
and unreal in the harsh overhead light, the darkening blood nearly the same
shade of burgundy as the room's painted walls and the bed's brocade
coverlet. "It's just a trick, " Mulder heard Lucy murmur to herself, "only
one of their tricks."
Hesitantly Krycek moved to the bed, sweat gleaming on his forehead.
Carefully avoiding the blood, he bent and, lifting the bedskirts with the
handle of his flashlight, peered beneath the bed.
And almost instantly recoiled. "Ohgod," he said in a choked voice, "someone
call the police!"
Mulder stepped forward and looked where Krycek was staring. There, just
behind the bedskirt, lay a thin white arm in a pool of congealing blood, its
hand extended towards them as if reaching for help from the deeper shadows
beneath the bed.
"What is it?" asked a voice, and the cousins started to surge forward into
the room.
"Get back!" snapped Krycek. But suddenly Lucy was beside him, kneeling down
and reaching under the bed. "All right, twinnies," she said, "it isn't funny
any more. You made Alex get us all out of bed." Before they could stop her
she grabbed the arm and pulled.
"Lucy, stop!" Krycek shouted, but she tugged once more and suddenly the
torso of one of the twins jerked out from under the bed, its head dragging
behind it at a grotesque angle as a deep wound in the throat gaped horribly
open. A handcuff gleamed metallic around the other wrist, where it was bound
to an identical thin white arm.
Lucinda screamed and fainted, and Mulder heard Jonathan retch violently in
the hallway. "Get out of here!" yelled Krycek at the others. "Fox, help me
get Lucy out of here. Gertrude, you deal with Jonathan. Mellors, try and get
hold of the authorities!"
* * *
"Police won't be here 'till tomorrow afternoon at the earliest," reported
Mellors gruffly once they had all gathered back in the living room, pale and
shaken and avoiding each others' eyes.
"What?!" exclaimed Mulder. None of the others seemed surprised.
"There's a storm moving up the coast, and there's already been some
flooding. Half the county is down there helping shore up the seawall, and
the roads up this way aren't safe to travel."
"This is ridiculous!" said Lucinda shrilly. She was wrapped in a blanket in
one of the easy chairs, a large glass of brandy clutched in her shaking
hands. "That means we're stuck here with a murderer! There's some madman
with a knife hiding in the house and he'll murder us all in our beds and - "
"Hush, Lucinda!" said Gertrude sharply.
"I'm sure we'll all be fine," said Krycek. "As long as we all stay together
tonight - "
"Huh!" snorted Jonathan loudly, and they all turned to look at him where he
sat hunched in an easy chair, still greenish and pale. "So you're saying you
think it was one of us? That we should all stay together and keep and eye
on each other?"
"That's not what I said -" began Krycek, but Jonathan made a contemptuous
gesture at him.
"No, but it's what you meant, isn't it? But before you start trying to
turn us all against each other, I'd like to know what you were doing
skulking around earlier. You said you'd heard noises, but there's no way you
could have heard us talking from your room!"
The venom Mulder had heard in Jonathan's voice earlier this night was back,
and Mulder cringed at the sound of it, shivering. Even with the sweater
Krycek had given him, he was suddenly cold, his hands shaking.
"I did hear something," said Krycek tightly, "and what I was doing was
looking out for your safety, Jonathan! With the amount of brandy gone from
the decanter, it couldn't have been anyone but you who was about, and we all
know what happened to you - "
"Looking out for my safety, were you?" snapped Jonathan. "Well, we all know
how well members of the Mulder clan fare under your protection!"
"Jonathan!" said Gertrude sharply, and Mulder was suddenly aware that they
were all staring at him, strange expressions on their faces. Confused, he
looked away from them, turning his eyes to the coffee table in front of him,
his heart starting to speed in his chest. The tension and the angry blaming
voices in the room made him want to cover his ears, or run, get out of there
somehow, but he couldn't with all their eyes watching him, and now he
couldn't tear his own gaze from the bloodied cuff of his dressing-gown where
it lay across the coffee table, and he couldn't stop the vision that spun
behind his eyes... the grisly sight beneath the canopied bed.
The memory made his stomach lurch queasily... so much blood. Would his
memory ever be free of blood again? And all the things he was trying to
forget crowded in on him again, the memory of Walter sprawled on the ground,
his moans as Mulder had tried to staunch the bleeding from hole the bullet
had torn through him, the blood that had soaked through his clean white
shirt staining it like the sleeve before him... like the bandages, later at
the hospital.
"Right shoulder permanently damaged," he could hear the doctor say inside
his head, "future fieldwork an impossibility."
And Walter had looked at him like he hated him. "You'd better go, Mulder,"
he'd said, "Just go."
"Fox?" he seemed to hear another voice saying distantly, "Fox, are you
alright? Jesus, Jonathan, look what you've done now!".
Then everything went black.
* * *
When he awoke a pale, watery light was shining in through the windows and he
was lying on the couch, a blanket spread over him. A chair had been placed
by his feet, and Jonathan was sitting sideways in it, his knees pulled up to
his chest, staring pensively out the window.
"What happened?" asked Mulder hoarsely, and Jonathan made a startled noise
and turned around to face him. His eyes were bloodshot this morning, the
skin beneath them puffy and dark, all his easy charm and laughter vanished.
"You fainted," he said gravely. Then the small ghost of a smile flitted
across his face. "Lucy nearly had a fit. Started screaming that the brandy
was poisoned . . ." the hint of a smile vanished, and he rubbed his eyes.
"Though she should have known better, since I was still standing. Look,
Fox, I - " he drew a deep breath, "I want to apologise for my behaviour. For
all our behaviour, for that matter. It's this house, it brings out the worst
in us. You must think we're all awful."
Mulder opened his mouth to answer, but Jonathan held up a hand. "No, don't
say anything. We are awful. If we had any guts at all none of us would
have come back here - we'd have let the old man's money go to the home for
unmarried cats or whichever crackpot charity he chose, rather than letting
him pull our strings again."
"Why did you come, then?" asked Mulder.
Jonathan looked out the windows again, at the strange grey light. "I need
the money. As you might have noticed, I drink. I also play cards. Badly, I'm
afraid. I'm broke, and I owe money I can't afford to pay back...." He
sighed. "But I'm still sorry. I'm sorry we had to meet this way. "
Someone cleared their throat softly in the doorway, making them both jump.
When Mulder looked over he saw Krycek, holding a tray with coffee on it, and
he steeled himself, waiting for Jonathan's reaction. To his surprise,
though, Jonathan scrambled up from his chair and nervously said, "Let me
help you with that." And when the hands he held out shook so badly it was
clear he'd be of no help whatsoever, Krycek just said gently, "Thanks, but
I've got it - it's a one-person job, really."
Krycek set the tray down, and looked at Mulder with an odd, tight, nervously
expectant expression. Nonplussed, Mulder looked to his cousin, but Jonathan
was staring down at the carpet, his shaking hands twined together in his
lap. The silence stretched on awkwardly, and finally Mulder said
"Well - have we heard anything from the police yet?"
Krycek blinked. "They won't be able to get here until tonight at the
earliest - the valley road is flooded out."
"Christ!" said Jonathan violently, making them both jump. "So we're just
going to have to - the twins are just going to lie there until - " abruptly
he stood up, and looked at Mulder, his face pale. "We were right there.
Right there on top of them. And I didn't even know..." then he looked away,
and walked swiftly to the liquor cabinet in the corner.
"Jonathan, don't," said Krycek. But Jonathan selected a bottle and shut the
door with a bang. "Leave me alone," he said. "Please, the both of you. Just
leave me alone."
And Krycek left, face hard again. Mulder lingered for a few moments, but
Jonathan stubbornly kept his back turned, and with a sigh Mulder exited as
well.
Krycek had vanished from the hallway by the time Mulder left, and, feeling
sleep-stale and rumpled, he slowly made his way up the stairs towards his
room. As he reached the top of the stairs, however, he found Krycek hovering
at the door to the twins' room, key in his hand.
"Hey!" said Mulder, more sharply than he had intended, "You can't go in
there - the police will want to examine it, and you could contaminate
evidence. It's official procedure to disturb as little as possible."
Krycek spun to look at him, pale cheeks a little red. "I wasn't -" he said,
then frowned a little. "'Official procedure?' I thought you were a
psychologist."
"I am, but I work as a consultant for the police sometimes," said Mulder.
"Or at least I used to. And you really shouldn't go in there."
Krycek looked at him thoughtfully. "I really wasn't going to disturb
anything. But I thought I heard someone moving around in there, and I have
the only master-key. If you went inside with me, maybe you could witness
that I didn't tamper with anything?"
"Well" said Mulder, "I suppose we should at least open the door and look to
see if someone's been in."
He moved to the other man's side, and Krycek unlocked the door and swung it
open. Inside was a dim brown room furnished with a massive old sleigh-bed
and a couple of heavy wooden chests of drawers. The surface of the bed and
the floor were covered with a scatter of glossy paper which, upon closer
examination, turned out to be photos. Some were shredded and torn, but in
the few that remained whole, Mulder could clearly see the twins, some years
younger, naked, and posed on what looked like this very bed in a series of
embraces that were clearly more than fraternal.
Mulders' mouth went dry as he looked at them, and he felt his stomach heave.
When he looked up, Krycek's face was a mask of dismay as well, but there was
something in his expression...
Mulder looked around the room again, took in the two suitcases and one bed.
"You knew?" he said incredulously, "you all knew that they were - what the
hell is going on here? Who took these photos? Just what kind of a family is
this, anyway!?" He spun towards the door, but Krycek caught at his arm,
saying, "No, Fox, wait -"
Mulder shook off the touch frantically and ducked through the door, striding
as fast as he could towards his own room. He was almost there when Krycek
caught up and ducked in front of him, blocking his door. "Wait," he said
again, "I didn't know, OK? They've always stayed in that room, ever since
they were children, and whatever I might have suspected..." he paused.
"Let me by," said Mulder stubbornly. Krycek was looking straight into his
eyes, and Mulder couldn't help but notice again how green the other man's
eyes were, not brown-flecked like most green eyes but a pure, deep, almost
unearthly shade like jade.
"Look," Krycek said urgently, "I think we may have gotten off on the wrong
foot here. When you showed up after all these years, I just assumed you were
here to confront me. But maybe we can start over. I probably know this
family better than you do at this stage. And I understand that you must have
a lot of questions for me, so please believe me when I say I'll answer them
as best I can."
"Questions for you?" said Mulder, confused. "Questions about what, exactly?"
No Krycek looked confused as well. "About what? Well, about - about your
sister. And her accident."
Mulder felt something squeeze tight inside his chest, and his voice sounded
thin and young when he spoke. "Sister?" he said. "I don't know what you're
talking about. I never had a sister!"