Chains 
by Kipler@aol.com 
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Summary: An X-File, emotionally centered after "Memento Mori." 
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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." 
Part 2 
Seven o'clock. The sound of Mulder's paper shuffling came through the office 
door as Scully entered. 
"Did you even go home last night?" 
Mulder looked up at her, scanned her face. And smiled - the loose, easy smile of 
morning. 
"Think of it this way, Scully: You should be thankful that I showed enough 
forbearance to keep myself from calling you at two-thirty." 
Scully arched her eyebrows and looked at the pile of paperwork lying in front of 
Mulder. 
"What did you find out?" 
"Well," Mulder said, gesturing toward his computer monitor, "That the military 
records available to us are remarkably detailed and up-to-date. That Bill O'Hara 
and Ben Oak were both patients at the Portsmouth Veterans' Rehabilitation 
Hospital after the war, as were, apparently, most of the other men in the group. 
That they were all honorably discharged into civilian life." 
Mulder paused for dramatic effect. 
"And?" 
"And all twenty-three men who are not on the current mailing list are dead, 
Scully. Of what appear to be natural circumstances." 
"Appear to be..." 
"Yes. All seemingly random, all involving various illnesses or accidents." 
"Mm hmm... But..." 
"But these deaths occur in distinct waves, Scully. Look at this... In 1952, 
three men die - George Price, Alex Urrutia, Johnson LeJune. Then there are no 
deaths in the group until 1961, when seven men die. Then again, everyone's 
healthy until 1974, and three more die. Those are the two deaths that Anne 
O'Hara remembers - the ones with the screaming widows - and another one. In 1979 
three men die. And finally, in 1982 - that's the year my set of letters ended - 
the group loses eight men. Eight men, all in one year, Scully. And none in the 
years between. And now, within the last six weeks, they lose four more." 
"That's..." Scully began. 
"Beyond probability." 
"Theories?" 
"I don't know, Scully. But if Susanna Summering was right, then these deaths 
represent men who broke the chain letter - and the men who were meant to come 
after them in the chain. That would explain the waves." 
Scully moved to Mulder's computer and sat down. She glanced quickly at Mulder, 
started to speak, and then stopped herself. 
"What are you doing?" he asked her. 
She held up a finger. 
"Hold on a minute..." She tapped a name into the keyboard, and waited while the 
screen changed. "I don't..." 
She typed in another. Then another. And another. And let out a long, slow sigh. 
"What is it, Scully?" 
"These other men, Mulder. The names from my pile of letters - the eighteen 
survivors." 
Mulder moved closer to the computer and scanned the screen. 
"What?" 
"Out of eighteen men, Mulder, all but four are dead." 
Mulder shook his head slowly. His eyes widened slightly. 
"And then there were none," he said. 
"Or four." 
"Maybe we should talk to them." 
"Maybe we should." 
The dirty snowbanks ran into the grey of the parking lot that surrounded the 
wide, artless grey building. Scully pulled her coat tighter around her as she 
stepped across the layer of ice underfoot. The cold wind smelled of ocean and 
diesel fuel. 
Mulder held the door against the blast of air, and Scully walked into the lobby. 
A sign above the reception desk labeled the place: "New England Veterans' 
Retirement Village." 
"Excuse me," Scully said to the nurse behind the reception desk. "We called 
earlier. We've come to visit a man named Ben Oak?" 
The nurse smiled. 
"Yes. He's on... let me see..." the woman checked a clipboard. "He's on floor 
six. Room F17." 
The halls of floor six gleamed with an institutional grey-flecked brightness. 
Scully stepped off the elevator and looked left, then right, reading room 
numbers. At the end of one hallway, silhouetted against the light from the 
window, an old man was being walked, his left arm supported by a nurse. 
"This doesn't look like a retirement village," Mulder said. 
"No," Scully agreed. "It looks like a nursing home." 
The narrow bed of room F17 was made up tightly. No one sat in the blue vinyl 
chair near the window. The shades were drawn. Mulder parted them briefly; there 
was a glimpse of blue-grey ocean past train tracks and industrial storage tanks. 
Scully gazed at the photos sitting framed on a small chest of drawers. Two small 
girls, under a Christmas tree, flanked by a sea of tiny stuffed animals. "Merry 
Christmas, Gramp -1996." Two other small girls from perhaps thirty years ago, 
smiling up in bunny suits and fading ink. A woman on her wedding day, eyes dark 
and mysterious in sepia tones. A black and white shot of a group of young men in 
seaman's uniforms, carefully organized on the entry staircase of a large 
building. A scrawling label: "The Boys." Another black and white: a stretch of 
tropical beach and a white-haired native man, his head tilted, smiling into the 
camera: "Holy Man." 
Scully looked for a long time at the photos. A lifetime, condensed into five 
portraits. 
A nurse entered, carrying a tray of medications. 
"May I help you?" she asked, moving toward the dresser. Scully moved out of her 
way. 
"We're here to visit Ben Oak." Mulder said. 
"Oh, he's in the sitting room, down at the end of the hall. I'll take you." 
The sitting room was really a widening of the hallway. It contained a dozen or 
so blue vinyl chairs, all matching the one from room F17, scattered about in a 
seemingly random pattern. Seated in the chairs were a half dozen old men. Two 
played checkers over a small table. One sat dozing by the window. Three stared 
at a television set, absorbed by the sight of five leather-bound teenage girls 
shouting obscenities at each other. The air was stiflingly warm, here. All the 
men were wearing sweaters. 
The woman nodded toward the man at the window. He was a small man, swallowed by 
the chair. He was neatly dressed in grey trousers and a white shirt, and his 
white hair was combed carefully to one side. He looked out the window through 
half-closed eyes. 
"Mr. Oak gets drowsy at this time of day," the nurse said. 
"Will he mind if we ask him some questions?" Scully asked. 
"Questions?" The woman sounded startled. 
"Yes... Is there a problem with that? We spoke to the receptionist earlier, and 
explained our reasons for coming. She said that Mr. Oak would be happy to 
receive visitors - " 
"No..." said the woman. "You see, the receptionist doesn't know the residents. 
Mr. Oak is always happy to receive visitors. It's just that he won't be able to 
answer any questions." 
"What do you mean?" 
"Ms... Scully, is it? Ben Oak doesn't speak. He had a stroke... he's suffering 
from aphasia." 
Mulder glanced at Scully, then back at the nurse. 
"He can't speak at all?" 
"No words. He has some hand gestures which we understand, but no sentences. With 
this form of aphasia, there's an impaired ability to produce language - either 
spoken or written." 
"But we have a number of letters written by Ben Oak from this address over the 
last six years," Mulder said. 
"Yes," said the woman. "I'm sure that's true. Mr. Oak used to live on Floor Two 
- in our independent residence area. He only just suffered his stroke in late 
November." 
Mulder shook his head an moved toward the window where Ben Oak sat. He squatted 
down in front of the man and began talking softly. 
Scully turned toward the nurse. 
"What are his chances of recovery?" 
"It's hard to say. There are some stroke victims who recover fully from aphasia. 
But it's been almost eight weeks, now, for Mr. Oak. I haven't seen much of a 
change. He is seventy-seven years old. Most of the time, he just sits in that 
chair." 
"Does he have any relatives who visit? Family members?" 
"Yes," said the nurse. "A daughter. She lives up in Exeter, but she visits every 
week. She should be here on Saturday." 
"May I have her phone number?" 
The nurse shifted uncomfortably. 
"We're not in the habit of releasing personal information about family 
members..." 
Scully reached into her pocket and opened her badge for the woman to see. 
"My partner and I are investigating a series of suspicious deaths. We would like 
to speak to Mr. Oak's daughter." 
"I'll get you the information." 
The nurse moved away. Scully crossed to stand with Mulder. He squatted still, 
looking into Ben Oak's eyes, speaking quietly about the weather, the predictions 
for more snow, the lengthening days. The sunlight hit the old man's face, and he 
tilted his head back, smiling. 
Mulder looked at Ben Oak and Ben looked back, his clouded blue eyes intent. He 
seemed to be listening, seemed to understand the words Mulder was saying. But 
there were no words in response. 
"I have to be going, Mr. Oak," Mulder said. "Thank you for seeing me." 
Ben Oak reached up his left hand. Mulder shook it. 
The car hit another pothole and Scully was jerked uncomfortably awake. She 
cleared her throat and leaned her head against the window of the car. The glass 
was cold against her forehead, but she left it there, trading the discomfort of 
the chill for the chance to relax her neck for a few minutes. She sighed. It had 
been a long day, with a long wait at the airport in Boston and a long drive from 
Augusta, Maine to this tiny road in the woods. 
"What was that you were saying this morning, Mulder? That the drive from Boston 
would be nothing?" 
"Distance is all relative, Scully," Mulder started playfully. But then he halted 
himself and his voice changed. "Look, if you're tired, if you want to call it a 
day, we can go back now, and find a hotel - " 
Scully cut him off. 
"What time was Keller expecting us?" There was a hint of irritation in her 
voice, and she called it back. 
"Five-thirty. We have another twenty minutes. Are we going to make it?" 
"Well... it should be about ten miles. Assuming we made the right turn back 
there." 
Mulder lapsed into awkward silence. Scully let him. She looked out the window of 
the car. The road was narrow, barely two lanes, fenced by pine forest. In the 
woods, where the shade of the trees blocked the sun, there were patches of grimy 
white scattered among the black tree trunks. On the roadside here and there were 
dirty snowbanks. The road was wet with the melt of the day, freezing over now 
into black ice. The wind slid across the pavement, carrying loose, dry leaves 
and small twigs. Somewhere low, behind the treetops, the sun was going down. The 
last cold, rosy lines of light glared through the windshield. The glass was ice 
on Scully's skin. 
She raised her head and rifled through the papers on her lap. James Keller. 22 
Bear Camp Road. Alleman, Maine. That was the address. Scully smiled slightly, 
staring at the page opposite the address. Poems again. Too many notes on this 
case were written on Josh O'Hara's homework. This one was Coleridge. Long and 
brutal for a high school student. She jumped to the end. 
          ...whether the eave-drops fall
          heard only in the trances of the blast,
          Or if the secret ministry of frost
          Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
          Quietly shining to the quiet moon. 
Scully tried to imagine sweetness in the cold pouring through the window glass 
and in the darkness settling down on them. She could not. She shut the booklet. 
The car was a long time in silence. 
"There's a sign," Scully said, finally. 
Mulder squinted against the glare of the sunset. 
"Yes... We're right. Alleman, three miles." 
Three miles ran slowly, through the tunnel of trees, but at last the trees broke 
and the road met another one, running crosswise off into its own wooded places. 
At the crossroads was a sign: "Welcome to Alleman. Great Fishing. Population 
472." 
Scully guessed that the 472 was hyperbole. The town was little more than a 
cluster of buildings, trailing away from the intersection where the two roads 
met. At one corner stood a small school building of red brick. The schoolyard 
was broken and covered with patches of crusty snow and ice. A rusted swingset 
sat off to one side, and most of its swings were loose and dangling, frozen into 
the ice-filled, foot-dug trenches beneath them. Across from the school sat 
Thompson's Market, with a sign boasting "Everything from Gherkins to Gasoline," 
and opposite the market was a rambling white farmhouse whose first floor had 
been turned into the "Alleman Video Mart." A few dozen houses, some 
well-maintained and some with boarded windows, rounded out the civilized portion 
of the road. 
Scully supposed that somewhere, in among these trees, there were smaller roads 
and more houses. And there were probably hundreds of summer cottages, too, 
squatting by lakes and ponds, where people could take advantage of the "Great 
Fishing." But for now, in the deepening evening of February, the town looked 
very small and very much its own. 
James Keller lived at 22 Bear Camp Road, in a loosening yellow house on the left 
side of the road about a mile past the intersection. It was surrounded by the 
trunks of pines; the road here began to give itself back to trees and wildness. 
As Mulder pulled the car into the driveway, the front door of the house opened, 
and yellow light spilled across the darkened ground. A man stepped out onto the 
concrete stairway. 
Scully climbed out of the car and reached for her mittens. She turned toward the 
man's voice. 
"I take it you're Agents Scully and Mulder," he said, offering his hand. "I'm 
James Keller. Come on in, now. It's cold out here tonight." 
Scully studied Keller. He was a great man - tall and barrel-chested, with a wiry 
grey brush-cut on his head. Thick glasses dwarfed his eyes, and a wide scar 
crawled down the weathered skin of his left cheek. His voice was deep and 
booming. 
He ushered them into a dining room and sat them at a thick wooden table. 
"Just let me tell my wife you're here," Keller said and wandered out of the 
room. 
Scully looked at Mulder and saw a flash of amusement cross his face. 
"The walls have eyes, Scully." 
And indeed they did. From the four walls of the room stared the glass-eyed faces 
of half a dozen mounted deer heads and one bull moose. 
Scully gestured with her eyebrows to the wall behind Mulder. He swung around and 
found himself nearly face-to-face with the mounted, anatomically correct 
posterior end of a deer. 
A loud voice came through the door. 
"This is my wife, Mariana," James Keller said. 
"Mrs. Keller," said Scully, reaching out her hand. 
"Hello, there," the wife said. 
She smiled shyly at Scully, and took her offered hand gently. She was markedly 
torpedo-shaped: her body had one uniform circumference from sternum to pelvis. 
But her girth surprised Scully less than her accent and features. She was not a 
girl from the woods of Maine. Under the grey-streaked hair, the low hairline, 
were broad Asian features and dark mottled skin. Scully quickly imagined a young 
girl from the South Pacific, marrying a dashing US serviceman at the end of the 
great war. And just as quickly wondered whether that young girl's romantic 
imaginings had ever placed her here fifty years later, standing under the 
mounted remains of a deer's behind. 
"Mariana, get me some coffee," said Joseph Keller. 
The woman lowered her head and shuffled out of the dining room. Scully had 
another vision, of an episode of "Oprah" she'd seen one day, with a half-dozen 
Filipina mail-order brides, and the men who swore they were better wives than 
American women because they were obedient to their husbands. 
Keller sat down across from Mulder and folded his hands in front of him. 
"You said you wanted to talk to me about my experiences in the war? What is this 
all about?" 
"Actually, Mr. Keller," Mulder said, "we want to talk with you about your 
experiences with a group of men carrying out a round robin correspondence." 
"The chain letters?" 
"Yes. You've been in contact with those men?" 
"Yes. I write to them." 
"Mr. Keller, what is your link to the other men in the chain letter? Did you 
know them all during the war? Did you know them from the hospital?" 
"No." The man sounded insulted - angry, even - at the implication. "I didn't 
need to go to any hospital. I was fine." 
"So how were you connected to those men?" 
Keller looked up. 
"We all knew Ben." 
"Excuse me?" 
"We all knew Ben Oak. That's why we're in that group. He's the one who started 
it and keeps it going. He's the one who writes letters to all of us." 
"Mr. Keller," said Scully, "Are you aware that in the past two months, at least 
eighteen of those men on your list have died?" 
She watched Keller's face fall. He had not been aware. 
"Ben?" 
"He's alive," Scully answered. "But he's had a stroke. They're uncertain whether 
he will recover." 
Keller's body was still except for his left hand, which lay shaking on the 
table. Mulder looked awkwardly at Scully, and then back at the man. 
"We're sorry, Mr. Keller," he said. "But... we were hoping that you could give 
us some insight into the causes of these deaths. There seems to have been a 
recurring pattern, over the years." 
Keller was silent for several minutes. Scully thought he hadn't heard Mulder. 
But then he spoke. 
"Pattern?" he said, his voice low. 
"People dying." 
Keller's fingers drummed against the tabletop. He looked at Mulder as he spoke. 
"People die. You can't blame anyone. You can't blame Ben..." 
"No one is blaming anyone," Scully said. "Why would you think that -?" 
Just at that moment, James Keller's wife shuffled into the room, carrying a tray 
loaded with coffee and mugs. Keller looked away abruptly; it was clear that he 
would not talk with the woman in the room. She poured the coffee and stood in 
the doorway until her husband signaled her away. 
"Why would you think that anyone blames Ben Oak?" Scully asked again. 
Keller's eyes were focused somewhere far away as he spoke. 
"Those women, that summer at camp. Stephen Summering's wife, and Hal Johnson's. 
They blamed Ben for killing their husbands. And the letters. But it wasn't Ben. 
People die. Ben Oak is a good man. In the war, on Tamarau, he was... he was our 
leader." 
Scully's mind flashed to Anne O'Hara's photo album of the three gaunt POW's, of 
the chains on their hands and feet. And of the scarred left cheek of the man in 
the middle. 
"You were with him and Bill O'Hara," she said. "In the prison camp. You were 
released with him." 
"Yes," Keller said. "Ben helped keep us alive. You don't know... the things that 
happen in a war. I went in when I was nineteen. And then... there were 
twenty-five of us, rounded up and put in that camp. Only a few of us came out, 
and none of us the same. Those people... that place... they took the souls out 
of us. The boys who went into the war at nineteen never came out. But Ben... 
He's a good man." 
"Mr. Keller," Mulder said. "Was there anything... unusual that happened in your 
group? Anything out of the ordinary that your military service involved? 
Anything at all that would explain the deaths of all these men?" 
Keller paused, as if he were gathering his thoughts. Scully found herself 
leaning in expectantly. But Keller stood up. He was done. 
"People die. All that happens if you ask why is... you get very angry or very 
scared." 
It was nine-thirty by the time they made it out of the woods and found the 
Lakeside Motel, caught between hunting and fishing seasons and nearly deserted. 
The heating system was making a half-hearted attempt to heat a room that had 
been ice cold when they arrived. Scully was tired, dreadfully tired from the 
day, but Mulder had driven the whole way and it wasn't fair to go to sleep yet, 
not when he wanted to dissect the case. So Mulder was at his computer at the 
table by the window, and Scully was in the big chair by the radiator trying to 
get warm. 
"It's clear that James Keller is hiding something from us, Scully." 
"You could be right, Mulder. But we can't force him to give us his war photos, 
his personal correspondence. Not without something more substantial to go on 
than a possible fifty-year-old... curse." 
Mulder smiled slightly. 
"The curse theory may be overtaken by the military conspiracy theory, Scully." 
"Which says...?" 
"Maybe all these men were keeping secrets. Susanna Summering said that her 
husband and Hal Johnson died because Mr. Summering broke the chain. But maybe he 
didn't. Maybe the men who died kept the chain too well. Maybe they gave away 
information that someone didn't want them to share." 
"And all those deaths were staged?" 
"I'll admit it's a longshot. But we've seen what the military is capable of." 
The heating system hissed and clicked, but still the room remained chilly. 
Scully gave up on the chair and moved to the bed, propping herself against the 
pillows and scattering the work on the blankets around her. 
"So James Keller is no help," Mulder said, "and Ben Oak isn't talking. Who's 
left?" 
"I think we should talk to Ben Oak's daughter, Teresa Fleury. She's nearby, and 
it's her father who seems to be the big question mark in all this. Surely she'll 
know something about him." 
"As much as Anne O'Hara knew about her father?" Mulder asked. "It's not hard to 
keep secrets, Scully." 
Scully sighed. 
"What do you think?" 
"Well, we've still got three other living members of the mail chain. One in New 
York, two in New Jersey. I think we should talk to them. And maybe soon, given 
the track record of this group." 
"OK. So you take New York and New Jersey. I'll stay here and drive down to 
interview Teresa Fleury. Then we can compare notes." 
Mulder's eyes shifted slightly and his jaw tightened. 
"What?" Scully asked, before she could catch the word, before she knew. 
Mulder shook his head and did not look up at her. 
"Nothing. That's fine. It should only take a day or two." 
But everything was a measure of time, now, and a day was a day. 
It was too much to consider time like this, incessantly, and Scully wished 
suddenly and overwhelmingly to be released. Not from illness itself - that wish 
would be hubris - but from the practicalities of it, the urgency of it, the 
heaviness of it. From the need to think, every time things were easy for a 
moment, "This is how it always used to be and we didn't know." 
Her mind was distracted and she was suddenly very tired. She thought for a few 
minutes that she was still reading about the case, but really she was looking 
for the Coleridge poem scattered among all these papers. That line. 
          The Frost performs its secret ministry,
          ...so calm, that it disturbs
          And vexes meditation with its strange
          And extreme silentness. 
And in the silence of the room, while Mulder worked or pretended to work, Scully 
read and reread the old words in front of her, and tried to imagine a silence 
without menace and without weight. But even as she closed her eyes and willed 
herself to rest, she could feel it pushing on her. And she knew that the weight 
was half hers and half Mulder's. And the half that was Mulder's did not leave 
the room until long after sleep had quieted her thoughts. 
Part 3 
It was a dim, half-lit afternoon. The car was on Route 1, pointed south. But 
somewhere ahead there were snow squalls and glare ice, and accidents that shut 
down the road - so Scully sat and moved in stops and starts. An hour since she 
had left Exeter. It should have been a twenty-minute trip. 
Mulder would be in White Plains by now. His plane had flown out early. The 
airport in Augusta was small and trusting, if not efficient. Scully had been 
able to walk right out onto the tarmac as Mulder boarded, to stand there as his 
plane took off. A strange habit, new these last few weeks - another awkward 
concession to the rush of time. 
She turned the heater up a notch and moved the vent to "defrost." 
She glanced at the plastic-wrapped pile of photographs that sat on the passenger 
seat. A morning interview with Ben Oak's daughter Teresa, and this bag of photos 
was the only success she'd had. Mulder had been right. Secrets were easy to 
keep. 
"My mother told me," Teresa Fleury had said, "that men who talked about the war 
were men who didn't know what war could do." 
And so Scully was left with nothing more than a pile of borrowed photographs 
that Ben Oak's daughter had never looked at. No new information about Ben Oak's 
hospitalization. No outstanding memories of any of the dead men. No knowledge of 
the chain letters. Just the bland, happy memories of a suburban childhood: of a 
father who worked at GE and came home every night, who never once mentioned the 
war in the presence of his child, who kept his war photographs hidden on a 
bookshelf behind dusty National Geographics. Who spent every year's vacation 
among living reminders of the war. 
Scully sprayed the windshield with wiper fluid and flicked the wipers to clear 
the grime from her view. 
It was better without Mulder here. 
Not better. Easier. 
For her. 
The snow began again in earnest; the trees at the edge of the road were dusted 
with white. Scully flicked the wipers and leaned forward to see out more 
clearly. And stepped on the brakes to avoid hitting the car in front of her. The 
stopping wasn't as quick as it should have been; for a white instant she 
envisioned the car sliding through the guard rail, over the embankment, into a 
cold gully. That would be some cosmic display of irony. A car accident on a 
highway in New Hampshire, and Mulder all the way down in New York. Some cosmic 
display of vengeance. 
Be careful. Be careful what you think. 
One must have a mind of winter. 
Wallace Stevens. 
Scully smiled. She was beginning to know her poetry. 
She considered the man who had been Wallace Stevens - dead four decades, and his 
words left behind like cryptographs for Josh O'Hara and the other tenth-graders 
to decipher. The words chosen so carefully, to hang in the air like 
thought-ghosts. One day there had been spruce trees and snow and a poet watching 
them. And the day was long-vanished, and Stevens was long-vanished, but the 
words were alive, still dragging their power after them, forty years later. Like 
a curse on teenage boys. One must have a mind of winter. 
Finally, finally the traffic began to move again. Somewhere ahead the snow 
squalls must have ended; the last two miles to the hotel took only five minutes. 

Scully opened one large album. She recognized the pictures; they were duplicates 
of the ones she had been shown at Anne O'Hara's house. The photographs were in 
the same order: the same flat ocean, the same exotic women and picturesque 
natives. A professional job done by someone who had sailed with Ben Oak and Bill 
O'Hara. Exotic shots. War as tourism. 
Scully set the album aside. She riffled through a pile of small photographs: 
snapshots, poorly framed and overexposed. On top was a photo of three men - 
gaunt, chained together, squinting into the sunlight from a corral of lush 
vegetation. James Keller. Bill O'Hara. Ben Oak. 
Scully shook her head slowly. These men, wounded and blinded by the light 
outside their prison. What liberating soldier had thought to say, "Leave the 
chains on while I get a shot of this?" 
Six o'clock. Scully went to her coat and retrieved her cell phone. She set it on 
the table beside her. 
More photographs. She could recognize the faces, now. Ben Oak in the hospital, 
smiling next to a nurse. Ben Oak, thicker in the middle, older, on his wedding 
day, with the dark-eyed bride. Young Ben Oak as a soldier, sitting on a beach, 
sprawled in the sand. The same shot, but with James Keller. No scar, yet. Not 
thin, not sick. The two men with two dark-haired girls in native dress. With an 
old native man on the same beach. Ben Oak alone with the old man. 
There was one large black-and-white. It showed a roomful of men, dressed in 
pajamas, posed in three rows. Six well-coifed postwar nurses flanked the men on 
either side. On the back of the photo were a series of signatures, arranged as 
the men and women were arranged. A smeared label read, "Portsmouth. February, 
1946." Months after the war had ended. Months after the men had been released 
from prison camps, from battle, from whatever danger they had survived. Scully 
wondered why none of their military records showed medical discharges, if they 
had been in the hospital for such a long time. 
There was Ben Oak. There was Bill O'Hara. And Scully scanned the other faces, 
putting features on the names of the men whose deaths she was investigating. Sam 
Jacobsen. Frank Ely. 
Thirty-seven names, all familiar to Scully from the signatures on the chain 
letters. Most of the men from the letters were here. And there were others, 
probably, who had been released before this photo was taken. 
Scully kicked off her shoes and looked out the window. The parking lot was white 
now, and the tire tracks were shiny with freeze. Beautiful. A Norman Rockwell 
painting. And the accurate and dependable forecast was calling for more snow and 
dangerous conditions tomorrow evening. She was glad to be indoors for the night. 

The phone rang; she picked it up quickly. 
"Scully." 
"Hi." Mulder's voice. "How're you doing?" 
"Fine," she said. "I'm fine." 
A brief silence while Mulder accepted the words. 
"It's cold in New York, Scully." 
"Yeah. It's cold here, too." 
Another pause. 
"So what did you find out?" 
"Not much, Mulder. Ben Oak did not discuss the war with his daughter. Period. 
I've got some photos, though. How did you do?" 
"Well, I just got done visiting Dave Larson in Cincinnati." 
"Did he know anything?" Scully asked. 
"Not nearly enough, Scully. He's rapidly failing from the advanced stages of 
Alzheimer's disease. It's been a sudden decline." 
Scully let out a slow breath. 
"So he's a blind lead." 
"Not quite. I got to talk to his wife, Oola. She seems to have a lot of 
information. She knew most of the men at the Portsmouth Rehabilitation Hospital. 
She was a nurse there; that's where she met her husband. I showed her the list 
of names we had, and she said most of them had gone through the hospital." 
Scully reached for the creased 8 X 10 photograph and scanned the names on the 
back of the page. There she was. Oola Ames. When Scully looked closely at the 
photo, she could see a manicured hand resting lightly on the shoulder of the 
last soldier in the top row of the photo. Dave Larson. 
"I've got a picture of her right in front of me. What did she tell you?" 
"Well, big news first. You know the other two men I hoped to speak to? Mack 
Levandowsky and Dan Pitman?" 
"Yes." 
"It seems that Mack is no longer with us." 
"How?" Scully asked. 
"He died in a car accident on New Year's Eve. Apparently his death record hadn't 
made it into the computer's database when we searched for it." 
"What about the other man - Dan Pitman?" 
"Oola Larson didn't know him from the hospital, but she did know him from the 
reunions. And listen to this, Scully: his home address is St. Patrick's rectory. 
He's a priest. Oola Larson says that he went into the war an atheist, and found 
the power of the rosary after being injured at Normandy. Prayed himself to 
health. He married his fiancee, raised his family, and then when his wife died, 
he took the vows. I've set up an appointment with him tomorrow." 
"Mulder..." 
"Yeah?" 
"The two men who are alive and healthy - Dan Pitman and James Keller - neither 
of them spent time in the hospital in Portsmouth." 
"That's right. Strange, isn't it?" 
"Yes. It bears further investigation. It's too bad Levandowsky and Larson can't 
give us any information." 
"It might not be so bad, Scully. Mrs. Larson is quite a good conversationalist. 
She gave me some interesting information." 
"Like what?" Scully asked. 
"The patients at the Portsmouth Rehabilitation Hospital? They were all severely 
traumatized. By the time they ended up there, most of them had failed to respond 
to treatment in regular military hospitals around the country. They were 
psychologically disabled. Chronic cases. The Hospital was a residential 
psychiatric facility." 
Scully scanned the faces of the men in the photograph. They stared up at her 
blandly. Not one wore a smile. Not one carried the light-heartedness that was 
his right by his youth. But every one looked sound, whole, ready to join an 
assembly line and buy a house in Levittown. 
"What happened?" she asked. "They were all released. None of them were 
discharged due to psychological problems." 
"That's where it gets interesting. Mrs. Larson says that in the fall of 1945 - 
which is just around the time Ben Oak was admitted - the men began making steady 
and marked improvement. Without explanation. By the fall of 1946, they had all 
been discharged." 
"And she has no idea what brought on this improvement?" 
"No." Mulder paused for a moment. "But Scully, there is evidence that the United 
States military was experimenting with psychoactive drugs as early as the 
1940's. If these men were incapacitated... hospitalized without hope of 
recovery..." 
"Human guinea pigs?" Scully said. 
"It's a possibility. Suppose the government stumbled onto something that 
actually worked... that reset the brain chemistry of these men? That cured 
them?" 
Scully was silent for a minute, thinking. 
"And an experimental treatment from fifty years ago would be worth the 
military's involvement, all these years later?" 
"I don't know how, Scully... But imagine the impact of a drug like this? The 
implications for society? If someone were trying to control the flow of 
information about it, and there were men who could leak the information..." 
Scully sighed. 
"Mulder, it's going to be nearly impossible to follow a trail this old if most 
of the people involved are dead." 
"Maybe not," Mulder answered. "It's a long shot, Scully, but... in that picture 
you have, is there a nurse named Violet Ramsey?" 
Scully flipped the photo over, and found the name. There she was, a tall blond 
nurse in the back row. 
"Yes. Why?" 
"Violet Ramsey was the charge nurse on the day shift when Ben Oak and the other 
men were patients at the hospital. She was the one responsible for distributing 
medications, for monitoring dosages. And it just happens that Ms. Ramsey has 
stayed in touch with Oola Larson all these years." 
"So where is she now?" 
"Still living in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Just a stone's throw from you. Would 
you like her number?" 
Scully rummaged for her pen and paper. She jotted down the number. 
"OK. I've got it. I'll try to set something up for tomorrow." She paused for a 
moment, then continued. "What time do you see Father Pitman?" 
"He couldn't see me until one o'clock... But I should still be able to make it 
back. There's a flight that would get me into the city late tomorrow afternoon." 

"If they don't close Logan because of the snow..." 
A pause. 
"That hadn't occurred to me. Look, Scully - " 
"What?" 
"Don't drive if it's snowing in the morning. This thing can wait a day." 
Be careful. Snow is dangerous. Do you see the irony, Mulder? 
She decided not to say that. 
"One must have a mind of winter," she decided to say. 
A beat from Mulder. 
"Wallace Stevens?" 
Scully laughed softly. 
"I'm impressed. All this and a working knowledge of modern American poets, too." 

"I'm a renaissance man, Scully." 
Then there was silence on the line - a long silence, and Scully could hear the 
sound of the television playing in Mulder's hotel room. There were no practical, 
everyday words left to say - nothing about the case, nothing about business. 
There was goodbye, but it was such a strange word, now - heavy and hard, with 
too many layers. 
Scully flipped over her paperwork, looking at pictures of Ben Oak as a young 
man. She pulled her knees up and rested her forehead against them as she held 
the phone to her ear and Mulder still did not talk. She fumbled with the papers 
in front of her. She lined the photos up, chronologically, so that she could see 
Ben Oak turn from a young man to a POW to a husband and father and grandfather. 
She flipped open Josh O'Hara's booklet, the pile of words that hung in the air 
like an incantation. 
          One must have a mind of winter
          To regard the frost and the boughs 
          Of the pine-trees covered with snow;

          And have been cold a long time
          To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
          The spruces rough in the distant glitter 
          Of the January sun; and not to think
          Of any misery in the sound of the wind. 
"You still there, Scully?" 
"I'm still here. I'm still here." 
"OK." 
Part 4 
Scully checked her watch. Nine forty-five. She was early. 
The house sat near the edge of town - near the edge of New Hampshire, actually. 
As she climbed from the driver's seat, Scully could see the great steel bridge 
that arched into Maine. It was a tight neighborhood; the boxlike houses stood 
close, back-to-back in tiny yards crammed with picnic tables and covered grills 
and trash barrels. Here and there a bright spot of red or yellow or orange 
emerged from the white-grey snow: the hulking plastic lawn toys that announced 
the residence of a small child. 
Scully hadn't expected the woman meeting her to be so tall. Violet Ramsey 
towered a good seven inches above her. Strange, for a woman who must be at least 
seventy. Scully guessed that in her youth Ms. Ramsey must have hit six feet. 
Mulder's height. 
"Come in, dear," the woman said, opening the front door. "Be careful on the 
steps. They're slippery." 
Scully wiped the slush off her feet. Violet Ramsey ushered her to an overstuffed 
white chair. 
"I hope you like Earl Grey," she said, gesturing to a tea pot. "I'm afraid it's 
a little strong for some people." 
Scully smiled. 
"People don't often serve me tea during an interview," she said. 
Violet Ramsey smiled back. 
"I was startled when you called me last night. It's been so many years... The 
Hospital has been closed for decades. I was surprised that anyone was curious 
about it." 
"As I told you," Scully said. "My partner and I are investigating a series of 
deaths among men who were patients at your hospital. Soldiers who were admitted 
soon after the war." 
She pulled out the 8 X 10 photo of the nurses and soldiers. The old woman took 
it and gazed at it for a long time. 
"Look how young we were," she sighed. "Look at Oola and Dave. And the others. 
But... how many of the men have died?" 
Scully sighed. 
"To the best of my knowledge, Ms. Ramsey, the only men left alive from this 
picture are Ben Oak and Dave Larson." 
The woman's face fell; her teacup shook in her hand. 
"I'm sorry," Scully said. "My partner and I are trying to find a link among 
these men. Something that would tie them together and give us a clue about their 
deaths. Do you recall anything unusual about the medical histories of these men? 
Anything at all?" 
Violet Ramsey put her teacup down and looked at Scully. 
"Their recoveries." 
"Could you be more specific?" 
"Back then - right after the war - the Hospital... it was a dumping ground. The 
men that we saw were... most of them had come back from POW camps. Some of them 
had been at Normandy... had seen every man they knew slaughtered. They were 
broken. They weren't able to go back to their families. They weren't able to 
hold down jobs. They could barely take care of themselves. But this group... 
something happened to them. They came out of it. All of them. I've never seen it 
happen so quickly before, and I've never seen it happen since. I can't explain 
it." 
"Were you aware of any medications or unusual treatments that the men may have 
received which would explain their recoveries? Any nontraditional therapies?" 
"Ms. Scully, this was the 1940's. Penicillin had just been invented. That was a 
miracle to us. There was no prozac or lithium. All we had were tranquilizers for 
the men who woke up screaming and painkillers for the ones who had physical 
injuries." 
"And you were in charge of administering the medications? You don't think that 
there was a possibility of tampering?" 
The woman shook her head. 
"No... no. There weren't many patients on medications, really... and Dr.Grayson 
and our pharmacist had been with the hospital for years. One of us would have 
noticed anything improper." 
Scully nodded. 
"I wish I could be of more help." 
"That's all right," Scully said in a tired voice. "It's fifty years ago. But 
would you mind looking through the photos? Maybe they'll remind you of 
something." 
The woman shifted in her chair as Scully spread the photographs before her. She 
looked long and hard at the large group photo from the hospital, rattling off 
memory after memory. Peter Sanchez had lost nine toes to gangrene. Hal Johnson 
would not take off his hat because he'd gone bald while he was overseas. Don 
Previte was so combative that they had to sedate him twice. Bill O'Hara woke 
every night, screaming out in Japanese. Frank Ely didn't sleep once for two 
weeks straight. 
It was a litany of night terrors. 
Violet Ramsey moved on to the smaller photos. 
"I don't know," she said. "These are from the South Pacific. I wouldn't..." 
But then she drew her breath in sharply. 
"Oh, that girl," she said. "I had forgotten about her..." 
Scully leaned in. 
"Which one?" 
The woman held out a snapshot so Scully could see it.. 
"This young girl. Mariana," she said, pointing. 
It was the beach photo - the one with the young, healthy James Keller and Ben 
Oak sitting on the sand between two native girls. 
"You knew that girl?" Scully asked. 
"Yes. She used to come to visit the Hospital every day. They said she came over 
from the islands - Lord knows how. She used to sit with Ben Oak for hours at a 
time. And the other men, too. She was learning English..." 
Scully glanced hard at the photo. Mariana. She tried to do the anatomical math: 
to subtract fifty years from one face, to add it to another. To reconcile the 
portrait of this young girl on an island with the image of the round woman in 
the cabin of the stuffed deer. James Keller's wife. The nose. The eyes. The 
peculiar low hairline. It could be. It had to be. 
"Was the girl... Mariana... married?" Scully asked. 
"No..." Violet Ramsey answered. "But... then... I guess I really don't know. Ben 
wasn't married, so I always assumed that Mariana was his girlfriend. But it's a 
long time ago, and I didn't know them very long. Ben and a lot of the other men 
were released shortly after Mariana started visiting." 
Scully started the engine of the car and turned the heat to "high." She picked 
up her cell phone and hit the autodial button. The chirping ring was answered 
immediately. 
"Mulder." 
"It's me." 
"Hi, Scully. You got done early. How did it go?" 
"Well, Violet Ramsey doesn't believe that there was any medical testing going on 
at the hospital. She's pretty sure. In fact, she said that most of the men 
weren't receiving meds at all. But there was something odd, Mulder. Violet told 
me that Ben Oak and his friends received regular visits in the time they were at 
the hospital. From James Keller's wife, Mariana." 
"But James Keller was never in that hospital." 
"Yes. It's strange. I just got off the phone with Mariana Keller. I'm going to 
drive back up there and talk to her. I'd like to find out how she was connected 
to Ben Oak. She may know something that her husband wasn't telling us." 
Mulder's voice lightened for a moment. 
"This could be the scandalous indiscretion we've been waiting for, Scully." 
Scully smiled. 
"Look, Mulder... if I'm in Alleman, there's no point in your flying into Boston. 
It's- " 
"I'll fly into Augusta, then." 
"Mulder..." 
"What?" His voice was sharp. 
It's going to snow. Don't try to fly. 
"Nothing. OK." 
There was a silence. 
"Scully, I'll call you. As soon as I'm done talking to Dan Pitman." 
Scully clicked the "end" button on her phone and tossed it onto the passenger 
seat. 
It was a hundred miles to Augusta and thirty slow miles to Alleman. Scully 
pushed the car to move quickly at the end - although the sky had begun dropping, 
although the road grew grey and then white at its edges as the freeze began to 
stick. 
Mariana Keller welcomed her into the warm house with its yellow light and its 
smell of coffee already brewing. 
Scully glanced around the room of the deer trophies, looking for James Keller, 
listening for his booming voice. 
"Is your husband home, Mrs. Keller?" she asked. 
The woman shook her head gently. 
"No, no..." she said. "He's gone up north to check on his hunting cabin. Do you 
need to speak to him? We could - " 
"No," said Scully. "Actually, I'm glad to have a chance to speak with you alone. 
I'd like to ask you some questions about your husband, and the men that he knew 
in the war. And about you." 
Mariana Keller nodded her head and smiled slowly. She pulled out a chair for 
Scully to sit in. She was not startled by Scully's words; not curious. The wind 
outside howled, and the lights flickered off, then on. 
"It's a heavy storm," Mariana Keller said. "Heavy snow. We are far from things. 
We lose electricity. I will get the candles." 
The woman's voice was soft. It carried the trace of an accent, a hint of 
foreignness left after fifty years. 
Scully looked out the window at the low, grey afternoon. She glanced 
distractedly at her watch. Still no call from Mulder, and it was nearly 
three-thirty. She punched his number again. No answer. He might be with Dan 
Pitman, still. He might have left his phone in the car. He might be at 
LaGuardia. 
Scully shook her head to push away the thoughts, and set her hands busy, 
spreading photographs over the heavy wooden tabletop. Mariana Keller returned 
with three tall candles and a silver coffee pot. She lit the candles despite the 
overhead lights, and poured coffee into two large mugs. When she was done, she 
settled into a chair and waited, silent and expectant, looking steadily at 
Scully from across the table. 
"Mrs. Keller, you know that men in your husband's group have been dying." 
The woman's face registered no change, but Scully could see a quick flicker of 
her eyes. 
"How many men?" she said sadly. 
James Keller had not told her. 
"All of them. Except your husband, and Daniel Pitman... and two others who are 
very sick." 
There was silence; the woman looked down, staring at her coffee cup, running her 
thumbs over its rim. Scully picked up one photo - the shot of Ben Oak and James 
Keller on the beach with Mariana and the other native girl. She held it out to 
Mariana. 
"How did you know the men?" she asked. 
The woman took the photo quickly, greedily, and stroked it with her fingers. 
Another slow smile came to her face. 
"My sister and I," she said. "I used to have a copy of this picture. I lost it a 
long time ago." 
"Where was it taken?" 
"At home." 
Scully tilted her head questioningly. 
"I'm sorry," said Mariana Keller. "This is where I am from. Namau. It is near 
Fiji, the Solomon Islands." 
"I've never heard of it." 
The woman shrugged. 
"It is a small place. It is where my husband met me. And Ben Oak. They made a 
Naval base there, during the war." 
"You knew the men before they were taken prisoner?" 
Mariana sighed. 
"Yes. Before, and... after. The men from the ship who were taken... the Japanese 
held them on Tamarau. It was not far from our island. We didn't know if they 
were safe. Not until the end of the war. But James came back, he made someone 
take him back to Namau, before he came here. He came to find us." 
"Were you engaged?" 
The woman looked down at the photo in her hand. 
"No." She paused. "No. Not before." 
She picked up another photograph - the one of Ben Oak and James Keller with a 
white-haired native man. 
"This is my father," she said. 
Scully gazed at the picture. 
"Did your husband know him well?" 
"He knew James, yes. He took them out on his boat, when they would come onto 
Namau. I had no brothers. My father was fond of these men - Ben, and James, and 
Bill - but of Ben most of all. He called him 'my son.' " 
Scully watched as the woman sank deep into remembrance. Fifty years. 
"What happened? How did you come to the United States?" 
Mariana Keller was silent for several long moments, gazing at the picture of her 
father. Finally she spoke, and her voice was tender and reverent. 
"Namau was a small place," she said. "There were only ten families in my 
village. The war was... not kind to us. My father died. He was an old man. And 
after that, an epidemic came. Many people died, then. My mother. My sister. I 
was all alone. I thought that I would die of loneliness. I was waiting to die." 
"But you married James." 
Mariana Keller glanced up. Her eyes looked into Scully's. 
"James loved me. He loves me. He said that I was with him when he was in prison 
- that thinking about me kept him from getting too sick, from getting crazy like 
the other ones. He brought me here. He did not want me to die." 
Scully picked up the photograph of the men in the hospital. She scanned the 
young faces, tried to imagine them grown old and grey, tired and sick. 
"Mrs. Keller," Scully said. "What happened in the hospital? Why did you visit 
Ben Oak and the others?" 
The woman sighed and moved her eyes over the photos laid out before her. 
"I thought... I believed..." 
"Believed what?" Scully asked. 
"My father," Mariana Keller said. "My father was an old, old man. He was from an 
old time when there were many strange ideas. When I was a small girl, he would 
tell me stories. He told me that there were... I don't know how to say it in 
English... holy men. Men who had words to guard the soul of their people. That 
the words of a holy man tied the souls of the people together." 
The lights flickered again - off, then on, and off again. They did not come back 
this time, and the women were left sitting in yellow candle-light. Scully 
wondered about heat, about refrigeration, about water, and watched Mariana 
Keller's face. It was impassive. 
"We are far from things," the woman said. "It happens sometimes." 
Scully leaned back in her chair. 
"Mrs. Keller, what did you think of your father's stories?" 
The woman smiled. 
"I laughed at my old father, then. I was a spoiled girl, because I had black 
leather shoes and could wear lipstick and curl my hair. I thought that my father 
said crazy, old things. But when he died... and the sickness came... I believed 
him. All of my people were gone. I believed that my soul was loose, waiting to 
be taken. I needed to see Ben." 
"Why Ben?" Scully asked. 
"He listened to my father's words. He did not say that my father was crazy. My 
father loved him. I thought that my father had taught him things... words to 
say... to take back my soul. Maybe I was crazy, then. I believed the things my 
father had said." 
"Do you still?" Scully asked. 
Mariana took the photograph of the young soldiers. She held it up to the 
flickering candlelight and traced it with her hand. Her finger stopped at the 
face of Bill O'Hara. 
"The men were not... they were empty. Like me. But Ben did not belong in that 
place. He only went there went for Bill, I think. Because he could not stand to 
leave him there. James took me to speak to Ben, to ask him about my father. He 
told me to hush, not to speak of such things. But James was living near, and I 
was so alone... I went more often. I went to see the men who were half alive, 
like me. The ones whose souls were loose." 
Mariana Keller's voice trailed off and her eyes grew intent on the photograph 
one more time. Scully rose and carried a candlestick to the window. It was 
darkening outside. The snowflakes were large, now. She could see the tree 
branches bending low under the white, frozen weight. 
"Mrs. Keller," she said, finally, moving back to her seat and her coffee. "Do 
you believe that Ben Oak saved those men? Do you believe that he saved you?" 
Mariana Keller was silent for a moment. 
"Not me," she said. "Not me. Ben saw that James loved me. He saw my belly 
swelling. He saw that I was tied here - that I was tied to James. I thought my 
soul was loose. But Ben knew that it was not." 
Scully smiled gently. 
"And the others?" 
"I do not know. I do not know what Ben told my husband. I do not know what he 
told Bill. Or those other men. I only know that there were letters. Ben gave 
words to the men, and they gave words to each other. I think that they were... 
tied. I think..." 
But Mariana Keller stopped and stood up. 
"The coffee is cold. It is getting late. The snow is bad." 
The woman took the tray and moved out of the room, her shadow huge and trembling 
in the candlelight. Scully felt her words hanging in the air, felt the weight of 
them, the importance. But her mind could think only the snow and the time. She 
glanced at her watch and looked again out the window. It was full-dark, now, and 
no light from the house and no light from the sky. From the road came a roar of 
heavy scraping. A snow plow going by. Some twist of fear ran through Scully at 
the thought of the snow and the road. 
It was late. Mulder should have called. 
She switched on her cell phone but received a "no signal" message. She leaned 
closer to the window. Still no luck. 
Mariana was back in the room. 
"The cell phone is out," Scully said. "The switching station must have lost 
power. Could I try yours?" 
Mariana Keller picked up the headpiece to her own wall telephone and shook her 
head. 
"Mine isn't working either." 
Scully sighed and stared out the window again. This place was so far away from 
everything, from lights and the world. Mulder. 
"I need to go. I need to get in contact with my partner." 
"The roads are - " 
"I'll be fine. I have four-wheel drive, and the snow plow just went by. It's not 
too far to the hotel... and they may have power there. Or phone lines, at 
least." 
The road was passable; the snow on the ground was loose, not packed into ice as 
it would have been under a load of traffic. Scully moved steadily at first, 
looking ahead for signs of light, for signs of the end of the woods. But of 
course, there were no streetlamps on this stretch of road; it was too isolated 
to be lit. 
The radio was full of reports of the storm, of downed power lines and lost phone 
communication. Places to go if you needed emergency shelter, if you had lost 
electrical heat. But the sounds coming through were mostly static, and the 
information was cheerless, and Scully shut it off. 
She wondered where Mulder was, why he hadn't called. She wondered where the next 
switching station was, where her phone would come back into service. 
The road was passable, but the falling snow was blinding, closing around the car 
like a blurring curtain, until Scully found herself leaning forward, as if the 
blur were in her eyes, in her mind, as if squinting would clear it from around 
her. 
She thought of Ben Oak. She thought of a young man, standing on a beach in the 
South Pacific. She thought of a father. She thought of an old man sitting in a 
blue vinyl chair, gazing out the window of a dim, warm nursing home. She thought 
of the photograph lying on his chest of drawers. The Holy Man. 
The snow hissed like a quiet threat around the windows. The night pressed 
against the car, closed in on it. 
Scully shook her head. The night was only the night. 
          One must have a mind of winter
          To regard the frost and the boughs 
          Of the pine-trees crusted with snow
          ... and not to think
          of any misery in the sound of the wind. 
Scully thought of Wallace Stevens, of his words taking this night and taming it, 
making it real and permanent and only night, only winter, setting it forever on 
paper, harmless. 
But the wind hissed again. 
Not to think of the road. Not to think of the silence of the phone. 
She pulled her mind to the case, thought of all the young men lost fifty years 
ago, cut loose from their families and homes by a war, ruined by things they 
saw, thrown together in a place and left for lost. But found, somehow. Found. 
She thought of Dan Pitman, a priest now, saved fifty years ago, during the war. 
She thought of funerals and midnight mass, and the words that trailed on the 
air, then, thick with incense and truth that could catch you up, could hold you 
inside, could make you part of something great. She thought of Dan Pitman. Left 
alive after the others were gone. 
She thought of young Mariana Keller, of James Keller surviving a prison camp to 
find her again. 
She thought of all the other men, dead. 
"They gave words to each other." 
And lost them, one way or another. Took them back by breaking the chain. 
Or had them taken back. 
She thought of Ben Oak, sitting in the blue vinyl chair, and his mind, taking in 
the daylight, watching his daughter and grandchildren. And no words to give, 
now. His voice taken from him three months ago. 
Just before the other men began dying. 
Did the old man know that his words were lost? Did he feel his own silence like 
a weight? 
It was so quiet, now, and no sound from the world. 
The snow rushed toward the car like a curtain of stars. It fell in great flakes. 
It flew at the car, stealing the brightness of the headlights, reflecting it 
back. The sides of the road were invisible; the trees were hidden. A tunnel of 
white rushed at the car, catching it up in its beauty. Scully felt her heart 
beating strongly, pounding in her chest until she could hear it, and she 
realized that it was fear that her heart was telling her. She could not see the 
road, and she could not see the sharp embankment, and all the while the snow was 
pulling her eyes upward, drawing her vision to its silent, icy beauty. 
The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I... 
The words slipped from her mind for just a moment, for the length of a last 
glance at the snow-tunnel, a lingering admiration of it. 
And then the cell phone rang, and Scully braked the car, and Mulder's voice was 
on the line, ragged and loose with fear and fatigue. 
"Scully, where have you been? I've been trying to call you for hours." 
Mulder's words, and they sounded to Scully like a blessing tonight, and her 
reply like a blessing. 
End 
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