In The Dark
The group decision was unsure. Scully was on the “absolutely not” side. It was not a human fetus, probably just a rabbit fetus or something along those lines. Mulder didn’t want to believe such, and the Gunmen were absolutely enthralled by the idea that they had just found a human fetus in the desert.
So the group trekked on, significantly more uneasy. Being in the desert just felt wrong, like they were intruding on a party they weren’t invited to. Frohike and Mulder led the group, bickering about something.
It was starting to become obvious to Scully how little prepared they were. They had absolutely no idea what they were looking for or where they were going. Well, what did I expect?
“So, into the caves?”
Mulder looked around them. “I guess so.”
They had been inching towards the cliffs, kicking up dirt and hoping to find something, Byers and Langly trying to pretend they were collecting something important (dirt) and then later collecting something even more important (more dirt.)
And it was hot, too, hellishly hot, and Scully felt herself burning although she’d lathered on as much sunscreen as possible. She took out and redid her ponytail, feeling the sweat dripping into her eyes. The others were sweating even more.
To get up in most of the caves big enough to fit humans, you had to climb the rocks. They had plenty of handholds and footholds, and Scully knew she could do it, but she wasn’t entirely sure about the others. Maybe Mulder, but she was pretty sure the others had seen most of Mother Nature on a VHS tape.
She went up the outcrop first, carrying her bag and catching the other bags, which were apparently literally full of rocks. Byers made the climb relatively easy for being build like a twig, and Frohike lost his foothold and almost fell, scraping the hell out of his hand, but also made it. Langly hadn’t ever rock-climbed before and needed some instructing.
Scully coached him through it with the same voice she remembered her father using when he’d taught her. It hadn’t been out on the cliffs but she recalled his soft, instructing tone and his repetition of “handhold then foothold, handhold then foothold.”
Langly made it okay, but Mulder’s shoes had bad traction and he almost fell. She had to grab him and pull him up, almost going down with him, until he recaught his foothold and made his way up the ledge.
“Thanks.”
They had to stoop inside the cave. With it’s close proximity to the ground, it was unsurprisingly littered with beer cans and trash, which Scully put into her bag. The desert was supposed to be forbidding place and these people had dared it just to trash it?
It was dark and the flashlight that Mulder had in his bag was low on battery and didn’t help much.
The ceiling vaulted and they could stand up fully. Laying on the ground was a ratty, dirty blanket that had apparently been there for some time.
“Don’t want to know what happened on that thing.” Mulder said, and the Gunmen laughed. It even captured a smile from Scully.
The cave reached up what felt like a thousand miles, all darkness. Ahead of them was a wide gap in the rock, enough to crawl through. It did not seem very permit
“Whose first to go into the creepy cave tunnel?” Said Frohike, and everyone stepped back, excluding Mulder.
“How sweet of you guys.” Mulder said, kneeling and staring into the gap.
“Hey, you don’t know, there could be free pizza in there.”
Mulder smiled. “Wait until I tell you guys before coming in, okay?”
Scully almost wanted to snort. Yeah, the real hero type. “Thanks Hercules.”
Mulder crawled in the hole and for a moment everything was silent, their breaths the only things filling the silence. Frohike, Langly and Byers all exchanged a look, the kind that said: I’ve got a bad feeling about this.
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The tunnel was awfully dark and Mulder couldn’t help but imagine how Samantha was afraid of the dark and claustrophobic and if she was stuck in here-- oh god, she’d feel so terrified.
He kept going, his flashlight barely illuminating anything in front of him and Mulder all of a sudden felt so scared, so small inside of the great expanse of rock swallowing him whole. The whole bravery thing was more of a mask: just the persona he took on to comfort himself and the others.
The tunnel suddenly sloped downward and Mulder adjusted positions to slow his sliding down the rock. When he reached the floor of the lower cave, he lost his balance and almost tripped and impaled himself on a stalagmite. Close one.
He stood and tried to brush the dirt and spiderwebs off his shirt.
In the center of the grotto was a dark, dirty pool of water. Mulder had belt to examine it when he heard a faint call from down the tunnel
“Mulder?” It was Scully’s voice sounding -- worried? Nah.
“It’s cool. Come down here.”
Mulder faintly heard a scuffle down the tunnel, probably the Gunmen arguing over who to go first. He went back to the careful examining of the area around him, although the flashlight seemed to be getting dimmer by the moment.
Scully was the first to come out of the tunnel, unsurprisingly. The Gunmen were a lot of big talk.
“Mulder?” She located the weak beam of light. He was kneeling at the edge of the pool, staring down into it as if expecting it to reveal some secret.
“I haven’t been here before. I didn’t even know there was any kind of water down here. Pretty cool, though.” Scully said, waving her hand through the water and sending ripples.
Frohike interrupted the weird silence as he came down the tunnel reciting the Star Trek monologue-- finishing strongly with the “to boldly go, where no one has ever gone before.”
That broke Mulder’s silence, and as he laughed, his flashlight dipped to reveal something floating on the far corner of the pool. Fabric, maybe?
“Mulder, there’s something over there.”
He rose and walked over, carefully scooping it up and turning it in his hand, shining the flashlight to see it. It was a bracelet, the kind you made with thread and wove at summer camp, a friendship bracelet sort of thing.
Samantha had something similar, with her name and a heart symbol on it. She was so proud of it, despite that it was fraying and wasn’t made perfectly. She never took it off, even in the shower and the swimming pool.
Wait, hold on.
The water had faded the colors and the design significantly, but--
That was Samantha’s. With the pink thread and the ratty tie from summers of dirt and swimming pools.