Crampton (14 page)

CUT TO:

INT. SCULLY'S MOTEL ROOM

Scully, in sweats, opens the door to her room. Mulder is outside with his overnight bag.

MULDER

Call me paranoid, but I think it might be a good idea if we didn't stay in separate rooms tonight.

SCULLY

Come on in.

Mulder steps in.

SCULLY

I'll warn you, the TV doesn't work.

MULDER

No problem.

The door SLAMS shut.

INT. SCULLY'S MOTEL ROOM, LATER

The two agents are asleep, Scully in her bed, Mulder in a chair. They are restless--having bad dreams.

CUT TO:

INT. ELEVATOR

Mulder and Scully stand together in an elevator, not unlike the one in FBI headquarters. Their stance is awkward and oddly posed: Mulder is smiling, Scully looks annoyed. Treacly elevator MUZAK is playing a familiar but unidentifiable tune.

CUT TO:

INT. MOTEL ROOM

CLOSE UP on Mulder. He is twitching slightly.

CUT TO:

INT. ELEVATOR

The elevator stops. The doors open a few inches. We get a glimpse of faintly ROARING blackness on the other side. The treacly music has been replaced by a CALLIOPE playing the same elusively familiar tune.

CUT TO:

INT. MOTEL ROOM

CLOSE UP on Scully. Her face is twisted into a look of pain.

CUT TO:

INT. ELEVATOR

The doors open a little more, revealing more of the abysmal blackness. In the elevator, the agents look at each other apprehensively. A few more inches. The faint roar has become a HOWL. The agents make a move as if to step through the doors...

CUT TO:

INT. MOTEL ROOM

The HOWL in the dream becomes the cacophonous RINGING of the phone. Both agents wake with a start and sit bolt upright. The phone RINGS again. Mulder picks it up.

MULDER

Hello?

(no reply)

Hello?

VOICE ON PHONE

Hello? Hello?

Mulder turns his eyes to Scully. The VOICE on the phone is hers, though nearly inaudible behind vague background NOISES. Then the voice changes slightly--a near-perfect imitation of Scully's, but muffled, as though spoken through clenched teeth.

VOICE ON PHONE

Three o'clock. Showtime.

Mulder and Scully look at the motel clock: its green luminescent hands point to three a.m.

VOICE ON PHONE

You don't want to miss it.

The voice fades into HISSES and POPS.

FADE OUT

END OF ACT THREE

ACT FOUR

FADE IN:

INT. SCULLY'S MOTEL ROOM

Mulder is calling Ricky on Scully's cell phone. After a number of RINGS, the line is PICKED UP by an answering machine. The VOICE on the recording is not Ricky's.

ANSWERING MACHINE (ON THE PHONE)

Hi, kids! We've all gone to the magic show! See you there!

The machine hangs up. Scully comes in, holding a manila envelope.

MULDER

(a bit dazed)

I got his machine.

SCULLY

His machine? Mulder, he didn't even have a phone--how could you get a machine?

MULDER

Any luck with the manager?

SCULLY

He wasn't there.

MULDER

So much for always being at the disposal of his guests.

SCULLY

I found this, though.

She hands Mulder the manila envelope. It is labeled "FOR THE NEWLYWEDS." Mulder removes its contents: a photograph of Mulder and Scully posed together--Mulder smiling, Scully looking annoyed. It is identical to their positions in the elevator dream.

MULDER

Scully, I had this dream--

SCULLY

(interrupting)

Did it have an elevator in it?

Mulder is speechless. From outside, strains of CALLIOPE MUSIC can be heard. The song is familiar, but strangely elusive. The agents step out of the room.

EXT. OASIS MOTEL - NIGHT

The town of Crampton is all but dead but for one building: a few blocks down, the agents can see the Masonic Hall, still every inch a ruin from the outside, is brightly lit within. It is from here that the CALLIOPE MUSIC comes.

INT. MASONIC HALL

Mulder and Scully burst into the hall to find the Spectacular Display of Illusion and Ventriloquism has started without them. No longer a filthy ruin, the inside of the hall seems completely restored, with intricate ceilingwork, thick-glassed lamps, and a rich, ornate curtain.

The audience is a collection of New York theater first- nighters, carney types, show-business types--all kinds of stereotyped and fraudulent beings. Grinning clowns are working the crowd doing petty sleight-of-hand tricks. The unctuous CALLIOPE MUSIC plays just a little too loud. On stage, a VENTRILOQUIST is performing in an outrageously smarmy manner. On his knee is "Laffo."

Mulder and Scully lurk at the back of the audience. The magician-ventriloquist ends his bit with a shrill TITTER from "Laffo." An unseen EMCEE's VOICE fills the room.

EMCEE (O.S.)

And now, ladies and gentlemen, the moment you've all been waiting for, the centerpiece of our display: The Metamorphosis!

The crowd APPLAUDS. The calliope music disappears and is replaced by treacly MUZAK cranked to distorting. The KID from the Fix-It shop rolls a platform onto the stage: on it, a human FIGURE is tied to a frame, its arms and legs outspread, its head constrained by a band tied around it and a taut cord leading to the top of the frame. The figure is dressed from head to toe in a skeleton suit with an X taped across its mouth.

MULDER

Jesus, Scully, I think that's Ricky!

Mulder and Scully try to move toward the stage but cannot seem to get any closer--for every person they nudge aside, two seem to move to block their path. They draw their sidearms.

SCULLY

FBI!

MULDER

Federal agents! Get out of the way!

Strangely, their shouts cannot seem to draw the audience's attention away from "The Metamorphosis," which the trapped agents can only watch in glimpses from between shifting bodies...

On stage, a tuxedoed MAGICIAN with handsome yet forgettable features is rolling the platform from one side of the stage to the other and then twirling it around. Finally it is brought to a dead stop. With a stagey flourish the stage magician tears away the X across the figure's mouth. The skeleton figure emits a continuous tormented SCREAM.

In one swift movement the illusionist tears away the skeleton suit from the neck downward, revealing nothing but empty air underneath. The crowd OOHS, as the cowled head keeps SCREAMING. The illusionist then tears away the hood of the skeleton suit, leaving only a skull dangling from a cord; however, the SCREAMING continues for a few moments before fading into the ROAR of the jubilant crowd.

The illusionist takes his bows, the music goes TA-DA!, and within moments the hall has emptied.

INT. MASONIC HALL, ON THE STAGE

The curtains draw closed and the house lights go dim just as the agents finally reach the stage. Their guns still drawn, they part the curtain slightly.

On the other side: ROARING blackness.

Mulder and Scully look at each other apprehensively.

SCULLY

Ricky said that he thought he could have turned back here. That he still had a choice.

MULDER

I'm not sure we do.

Mulder steps through the curtain into the ROARING blackness. Scully is right behind him.

CUT TO:

INT. FBI HEADQUARTERS

Mulder and Scully step out of the elevator into chaos: FBI agents and EMS personnel are swarming around the office. Mulder and Scully look a bit unsteady, as if stepping off a pitching boat onto dry land.

MULDER

(to the nearest agents)

What's going on?

AGENT

You don't want to know.

ANOTHER AGENT

It was Johnson.

MULDER

Larry Johnson?

EMS personnel wheel a gurney past them--on it, Larry Johnson. He is straining at the leather straps that bind him to the stretcher.

AGENT

I think he had a breakdown or something. Just started screaming. I've never heard anybody scream like that before.

Mulder walks over to Johnson's cubicle. The chair is knocked over, papers and office supplies are scattered all over the floor. On the desk is a sheaf of black-and-white photographs. Mulder picks these up for a better look. Obviously overexposed, they depict only yawning blackness.

SCULLY (O.S.)

Did you know him, Mulder?

Looking at the photos, Mulder seems to be trying to remember something.

SCULLY (O.S.)

Mulder?

Whatever it was he was trying to remember, Mulder finally lets it go. He drops the photographs back onto Johnson's desk. They land on a manila envelope; the return address, written in neat, ancient letters: "Crampton, OH."

MULDER

I worked a case with him and his partner. It was a long time ago.

He turns and walks away from the scene.

MULDER

So, seriously, you never saw The Manchurian Candidate?

SCULLY

(following)

Nope.

MULDER

Never?

SCULLY

What did I just say?

MULDER

Jeez, Scully, it's only like the best conspiracy movie of all time.

SCULLY

I thought that was JFK--which you never saw.

MULDER

Yeah, but I know how it ends.

FADE TO BLACK.