Causatum

28 November 1973

Mulder Residence
Chilmark, Massachusetts

Fox Mulder sat on the stairs in the cold house. His expression was
blank and his mind felt frozen. One word circled endlessly in the
hollow space: Samantha.

The entire house seemed like it was in mourning. It felt like everyone had given up and died with the disappearance of Samantha.

In all of his young life he’d never felt as alone as he did in this
one moment. Samantha was his anchor into reality when his parents
ignored him. They only seemed interested in his academic record, not
apparently concerned that catapulting him upwards through the
education system because of his intelligence meant that he had very
few friends. The only time he felt comfortable at school was when he
played basketball. The camaraderie of the team made him feel like he
belonged to a special group but now his parents wanted to send him
away from even that. He definitely couldn’t go now, not while Sam
was missing. They would find her, after all no one disappears
without a trace.

Police had been crawling over the house all day but, from what he
could tell by listening at doors, had found no evidence of anything.
They’d questioned him blankly earlier on. Did he know of any reason
she might run away? No, she wouldn’t have done that without telling
him. Did he know if any of her things were missing? No, everything
was exactly as it had been yesterday. Did he know her whereabouts
yesterday? Yes, they had played Stratego for a few hours after their
parents had gone out. Then they went to bed. He hadn’t heard
anymore until this morning when he was told that she was missing.
Did he remember anything else that might be important? No, that was
everything. They’d left it at that.

Except that wasn’t everything. At least, there had to be something
else but he couldn’t work out what it was. Something felt wrong
about the situation.

The police believed that she’d run away. There had been no kind of
ransom demand so the possibility of a hostage motive had been ruled
out. There was also no sign of a break in. The only possibility was
that she had simply run away. The police were not enthusiastic but,
because Bill Mulder was such a high ranking individual within the State Department, the search planned was through and extensive. The situation stank to Fox. Samantha wouldn’t have done anything without talking to him first.

A door opened downstairs and the sound shook Fox out of the stupor he
was drowning in.
“Don’t drag me into your rationalizations.” His mother strode out of
one of the ground floor rooms and slammed the door behind her. She
pulled a piece of paper from her pocket and screwed it up, then
angrily threw it onto the hall table. She walked in the direction
of the staircase, but froze when she saw her son sitting there. Fox
stood up to face her, ready to give her a shoulder to lean on if she
needed one. Their relationship had never been close but now they
needed each other in order to get them through this and he hoped that
she might open up to him. She pulled her spine straight and her expression was not exactly welcoming, although tears glistened in her eyes.

“Are you alright Mom?” He asked her. She smiled weakly and started
crying. Fox moved closer and put his arms around her. She was quite
small and he was already relatively tall, so it was a fair height
match. Fox drew some comfort in having his mother need him. She
reminded him of Samantha, someone who needed him. He hoped that he
would never fail her as he had Samantha. He’d promised Sam that
everything would be alright and he was wrong because he had failed
her. Guilt welled up and threatened to consume him. “They’ll find
Sam.” He told his mother and felt her tense. He took it to be pain
at the mention of her name.
“We’ve lost her.” His mother said softly, but Fox shook his head
denying her words.
“They’ll find her.” He insisted. His mother just cried harder.

Fox helped his mother up to bed and tucked her in as he always had
done with Samantha. He switched off the bedside lamp and started out
of the room.
“Fox?” His mother called and he heard Samantha in her voice. The
pain of the single word was excruciating.
“Yeah mom.” He said as he turned back to her.
“Samantha will be okay, wont she?” She sounded so much like Sam did.
“I’m sure she will.” He answered as reassuringly as he could.
“Thank you Fox.”
“Mulder.” He said softly.
“What?”
“From now on I want to be called Mulder.”
“But Fox..?”
“Please mom.” He insisted.
“We’ll discuss it in the morning.” She answered reluctantly. Mulder didn’t believe that she would ever want to discuss anything with him, but he nodded anyway and smiled weakly. “’Night.” She lay down. Mulder tried hard not blame his mother for anything. Sometimes she seemed little more than a child herself.

Not once had she asked him how he was feeling.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Mulder walked down the stairs and listened carefully in the direction
of the door his mother had walked out of so angrily. There was still
a low hum of voices coming from behind the heavy wood door. Mulder
moved closer and pressed his eye to the keyhole. Inside, he could
see his father sitting in one of the study’s leather chairs. He
looked more tense than he had for the past few weeks, if that was
possible. Maybe their father did care for them if he was this
worried about Samantha. Ice chinked as his father drained a shot of
bourbon from a cut crystal glass.
“It’s easy for you to remedy the situation Bill.” A vaguely familiar
voice said but the owner was obscured because he sat in the second
leather chair facing Bill Mulder.
“Don’t look at me with that smug face you reserve for the others.
I’m not one of your operatives.”
“Of course not Bill, you’ve been a fine colleague.”
“You’re wasting your talents on me.”
“Well, I can see that you wont be moved.” The man stood up and
headed for the door. Mulder still couldn’t make out his face but
saw that he was wearing an expensively cut dark suit. He moved away
from the door quickly, hiding underneath the hall table, before the
door opened.

“..will continue, but we’d have liked you to be on board.” The man
finished, as he stepped into the hallway. Bill Mulder followed him
with a glass in his hand.
“You have what you wanted.”
“It’s only what was ours in the first place.” The man remarked, his
face still just outside Mulder’s line of sight. “None of them were
ever yours Bill.”
“What happens now?”
“You take the time you need to think things through. Your job will
be waiting if you wish to return.” There was a long pause. “The
search for your daughter will continue for as long as necessary. At
our expense, of course.”
“Why does the ‘thank you’ stick in my throat?” Bill said bitterly.
The other man laughed.
“We’ve known each other for too long to pretend anything, haven’t we
Bill?”
“Leave this house and don’t come back.”
“Just protect the mother.” That soft voice intoned.
“Stay away from my wife.” His tone was threatening but the man just turned away.
“I’ll be seeing you Bill.” He replied as he stepped close to Mulder’s hiding place and pressed something onto the table, then walked past and towards the front door. As he went he put on a long dark coat and turned up the collar, once more blocking Mulder’s view of his face. Bill Mulder watched from the doorway of the study as the man opened the door, stood for a second silhouetted against the fading sunlight outside, and left.

From above him Mulder heard crying and became aware that the sound was coming from his father. He’d never known his father to cry and the situation was so foreign to him that he nearly risked his father’s wrath by standing up and attempting to comfort him. Before
he had a chance to, the elder Mulder’s anger exploded as he grabbed
an object from hall table and threw it against the wall. The glass
ashtray shattered as it impacted and splinters flew through the air.
Bill Mulder turned and went back into the study. The closing click
of the door was final and resounding in the silence of the house.

Mulder clambered out from under the table, carefully avoiding the
splinters of glass on the carpet. Amongst the shattered fragments on the floor a single cigarette stub was lying crushed. Mulder looked at the table top where the man had pressed something and made the correlation between the cigarette stub and the man. Then dismissed it as irrelevant. His attention was drawn to something else on the table; the piece of paper his mother had dropped. He reached out for the paper and un-crumpled it.

There was just one word written there: Lamp.