Hoodoo 1 of ? Title: Hoodoo Author: Kory Rating: PG-13 Classification: X 
Spoilers: Like the first kind Keywords: red-eyes, sour mash, slaves. 
Disclaimer: If the x-files was mine, i would be on a beach somewhere. I don't 
own any of it. 'Kay? 
                                                              
Hoodoo- An X-file
  "Hey Red, find anything good?" the boy dressed in faded 
overalls with no shirt underneath called to his friend 
who was poking around a rusting old car next to a vine 
covered tumble down old house.
"Nope, Snipey," answered his crewcut pal in the cutoff 
jeans and stained tee-shirt. They went back to nosing 
around, oblivious to two shriveled figures creeping 
past them from out of the house. 
"He-yah, he-yah. Stop he-yah." A grey old lady dressed in 
rags said to her equally ancient and poorly dressed 
companion from behind an overgrown half-dead hedge.  
"Now holt stell!" she said and reached up to the 
others grimy dreadlock-like hair. She took ahold of 
several thick strands and gave them a yank upwards 
where they stayed in that position.
"Ay-oww!" the other stifled her yell with her hand, 
adding," ya' dint hafta pull `em that hart!"
"Shesh," her sister said, peering around the foliage. 
They's a' comin," and voices drifted out from behind 
the bush.
"Looka' here Snipey," Red said, holding up an old Model A 
radiator cap. He rubbed the glass to clean the dirt 
off as his pal walked over to check out his find. The 
clean glass revealed a thermometer inside.
"Cool!" Snipey said and grabbed for it. "Lemmeee see." Red 
feinted away from him and held the cap up teasingly.
"See wicha' eyes, not wicha' hands," Red said.
"Okay! Lemmee hold it then." His friend reached for it 
again and then froze, his attention diverted by 
something more interesting than this tired, worn out 
game.
"What is it Snipe? What you lookin' at?" Red looked at the 
bush. His friend had taken a birddog posture and began 
to creep slowly toward it.
"Somethin' in there," he said as Red fell in behind him. 
They crept right to it's edge when two old gray 
ghostly hags jumped out, one with her hair standing 
straight up.
"Aiieee! Booga, booga, booga!" They shrieked and rolled 
their eyes and waved their gnarled yellow curled up 
fingernails in front of them. The two boys would have 
jumped out of their shoes if they had had any on. They 
ran shrieking until they were out of sight. "Aaah.Ha 
heh heh! Hee hee hee," the dried up old women would 
have laughed enough to cry if they had enough moisture 
between them to raise a tear. "Dat da' only fun I get, 
dese days," said one as she tried to bend her hair 
back in place.
"Yep," said the other turning toward the house, "Let's get 
back an' check on Annie." They both shuffled back to 
the crumbling house and disappeared under the vines 
that covered most of it. Nothing else stirred in the 
hot sun, even when it gave way to cool evening and 
then dusk, only the bugs began to stir and fill the 
air with their commotion. Dusk gave way to the rural 
blackness of the country side and a few car lights 
were seen passing on the highway but not many. 
     Nothing had passed for some time when a little blue 
sedan pinged down the darkened highway from the East 
toward the vine covered house. Past fragrant lilacs 
and the dark formless masses of abandoned cars and 
small buildings enveloped in kudzu vines. Not a single 
light shined out of the once inhabited and now 
dilapidated buildings hopelessly covered in the fast 
growing Asian import. It was another hot Georgia night 
fit for ghosts and gators, but not a place for any 
kind of salesman.
     The car zipped around a curve in the road and halfway 
into it a beer bottle flew out of the window and hit 
the all encompassing vine which seemed to suck it up 
without a sound and make it it's own. The road 
straightened up again and the lights of a small town 
became visible in the distance. The little car with 
it's ailing four banger pinged along a little faster. 
Past another kudzu clump of a house it went. Then 
brake lights flashed red and blinding in the sleepy 
blackness. The car's white backup lights lent another 
degree of harshness to the night as it whined 
backwards and came to a stop in front of the small 
house, covered, except for some windows with pale 
light coming out of them, in thick draping masses of 
kudzu. 
   The driver of the car leaned across the empty 
passenger's seat and peered out through the blackness 
to the pale light. He felt next to him on the seat, 
underneath a pile of wrinkled clothes and came up with 
a fresh half pint of Kessler's Whiskey. He held it up and 
looked through it to the light in the window. It's 
inviting amber color glowing through in the dark. He 
reached up with his other hand and twisted the cap off 
with a "scrinch" as the plastic tabs on the unopened 
bottle broke away from the rest of the cap. He said, 
"Here's to a quick sale," to himself before he lifted 
the bottle to his lips and took a long swallow.
       Outside the car now, he walked up the weedy path to 
the door. Noises from inside the house caught his ear 
and he lifted a thin eyebrow above one bloodshot eye 
and said, "Sounds like a party."  He coughed and 
giggled at the same time and took another long pull 
from his Kessler's. He set the briefcase he was 
carrying down on the ground so he could use that hand 
to pull his back pocket out and wrestle the bottle 
into it with the other. "Don't make pockets like they 
used to," he muttered drunkenly to himself.
      Picking up his suitcase, he staggered to the remains 
of a wooden porch that once welcomed visitors to the 
door. He took a long reeling step over the collapsed 
and rotted lower boards and managed to pull himself up 
onto the top platform by clutching the vines that hung 
low from the roof. Stepping up to the door  with a 
resolve born of dwindling funds and distilled spirits 
showing on his face beneath his fading hairline, he 
straightened his clothes, neatened his hair and 
knocked sharply on the door.
      Inside the house the voices faded and the light 
dimmed down low so there was just the palest yellow 
glow emitted from the dust and cobweb covered windows. 
The salesman stood on the porch, completely swallowed 
up by the gloom. He stood there for a minute and then 
he put down his brief case and lit up a cigarette. He 
knocked again. In the dark, the glowing end of his 
smoke betrayed the teeter totter stance of a drunk 
standing straight and "still" as it bobbed around like 
a fire-fly. "I know you're in there," he said to 
himself, "I can hear you being quiet," and he 
snickered drunkenly.
      "Wham! Wham! Wham!" he knocked at the door more 
insistently as the firewater took another, firmer grip 
on his reality. "I'm not leaving until I talk to 
somebody, no I'm not." he said, in a besotted parody 
of a spoiled child. Just then, the light in the house 
flared up bright, not real bright, just bright enough 
so that some of the kudzu vines were illuminated 
weakly outside the window.
   The salesman took a step back as the dilapidated door in 
front of him started to shake and creak as somebody 
opposite him wrestled it from it's drooping, 
misaligned doorway. It finally came loose from it's 
fungus and rust glued frame and was pulled open by a 
thin ragged person silhouetted in the tarnished light 
of what the salesman could now see was an oil lamp set 
on a table in a bleak looking room.
          He leaned closer to the doorway and squinted in 
to get a look at the person holding the door. As he 
did the small ragged figure moved back into the room 
away from him until, in the dim light, he could see 
that it was a very old person. A woman, maybe, with 
grey gnarled arms sticking out from beneath a tattered 
shawl and a face wrinkled like a prune, only with two 
wide eyes staring out at him in curiosity and maybe 
fear. "Whadjawant?" it croaked out at him after he had 
got a look. This knocked him out of his reverie and he 
noticed that he had walked just inside the doorway to 
get a look at her. He quickly stepped out just past 
the threshold and the speech that had passed his lips 
so many times before began to pass through his drunken 
lips like a tape recorded message.
   "Good evening, I've come here today from the Econoshine 
Vacuum and House Cleaning Supply Company,"  he spewed 
out, managing to keep the slurring to a minimum. "I'd 
like to show you the latest in...."
        "NoGiddoutDonwanone," the gnarled woman sprang to 
close the door and just before she got to it something 
pulled her back from the door and flung her to the 
floor. Then before the addled salesman could react, 
another ragged creature thrust itself through the 
doorway and grabbed onto him.
    "Bleeeaaagh," it exhaled nasty rotten breath on him and 
in it's mouth he could see a few remaining yellow 
teeth as his eyes adjusted to the light a little more 
and he saw that the eyes of the poor gnarled thing 
were nothing more than big black holes, spewing forth 
a torrent of blood that ran between the cracks and 
wrinkles of age that made up the whole of the surface 
area of it's face. "Bleeaaargh," the thing screamed 
again and shook it's nasty head, spraying the quickly 
sobering salesman with blood and gore.
      "Oh...Oh...Oh my god!" he screamed in revulsion and 
fell over backwards, half off and on the porch, his 
upper body smashing through what was left of the 
rotted lower steps and the bottle of whiskey in his 
back pocket shattering against a concrete pier sending 
glass shards deep into his right butt cheek. He 
panicked and flailed his arms at the ghastly thing 
that had fell over on top of him and was clutching at 
his shirt and tie, making horrible gasping noises and 
spraying blood with each movement of it's withered 
head. "Aaaagh ! Get off ! Get it off!" he screamed 
hysterically.
       As if in answer to his cries, two dark shapes, 
equally bent and misshapen as the first,  leapt 
through the doorway and pulled the hideous bleeding 
thing off of him. They dragged the pitiful creature 
back though the doorway pausing only to wrestle the 
crooked door back into it's rotted frame before 
leaving the night as silent and still as it was before 
the salesman came calling.
       The panicked salesman removed his arms from where 
they guarded his face and seeing that they had gone, 
thrashed his way off the ground to his feet and ran 
screaming to his car. He got in and sat down, not even 
feeling the broken glass in his seat pocket. He 
started the car and lurched blindly out into the road 
and screamed down the highway, the motor in his little 
car red lined all the way. Toward the lights of the 
small town in front of him he sped, and didn't let his 
foot up off of the pedal until he passed the city 
limit sign and was bathed in the soothing glow of 
street lights. He slowed to a crawl then and began to 
look around for a bar to stop and have a quick one.
        He noticed his reflection in the rearview mirror, 
hit the brakes and pulled over to the side of the 
road. He clicked on his domelight and grabbed onto his 
rearview mirror to turn it  so he could see into it. 
It came off in his hands, though and fell on the 
floor. Cussing, he reached down to grab it and the 
glass in his rearend cut a little deeper. "Ow ! Geezus 
!" he yelled and picked his butt up off the seat and 
held himself up with one hand on the steering wheel as 
he felt around on the floor beneath him. Coming up 
with the mirror, he held it up to his face. Blood 
covered much of it. He looked down at his clothes and 
saw his shirt and pants also were covered in blood. 
Glancing into the mirror again, he was startled to see 
a red glow in his eyes. He looked again and it was 
gone.
           He got out of his car and went back to the 
trunk, opened it and removed a bulging sack from it. 
Walking over to the darkness of a shade tree he 
mumbled to himself, "Dang  dirty clothes, guess 
they'll have to do." He changed his clothes there and 
spent a bit of time with his pants off as he tried to 
pick the glass out of his smarting cheek.  
          After he was done, he was walking over to his car 
and a couple of late night partiers walked by on the 
sidewalk. A man and a woman, arm in arm, smiling, full 
of booze and good cheer. In leather jackets and blue 
jeans, they walked slowly holding each other and 
whispering into each other's ears as they went. When 
they got to the salesman he was opening the door of 
his car and he stopped and watched them go by. The guy 
looked at him as they walked by and said, "Hey ya', 
pard."  He took another quick look back at the tired 
looking guy in the rumpled shirt and tie because he 
could swear there was something funny about his eyes. 
They walked on down the sidewalk and the salesman 
opened his door and slid carefully behind the wheel, 
being extra careful not to sit down too hard.
       He sat there a few seconds and decided to stuff 
something soft under his seat. Gently twisting around 
to rummage in the back seat, he moved a few things 
around and found a pillow he used for sleeping when 
there was no motel or he just didn't have the money. 
As he raised his head up to turn around, he looked 
through the back window and saw the couple who walked 
by out  in the middle of the street  fighting like 
crazy. They were going at each others throats and he 
could hear them yelling. He turned to look out his 
open window and pain from the glass he hadn't 
completely gotten rid of shot through him. He grabbed 
onto the door and stuck his head through the window 
and held his butt off the seat again. 
       Looking down the street to the fight, he saw the guy 
strike the girl a blow on the side of the head and she 
went down. In the next instant she sprang up like an 
angry wildcat and flung herself on him so hard that 
they both fell over into the street. Suddenly, red and 
blue lights flashed past him and a police car went 
speeding toward them.
     The salesman sat slowly down on his seat again and 
started up his car and drove away. He just  stopped 
long enough to go into a bar in the middle of town and 
have a drink and buy a six pack to go. As he motored 
away from the bar down the straight stretch of highway 
toward the aura of lights from the next town in the 
distance, he didn't notice the chair fly out of the 
bar window and extinguish the red and blue neon miller 
high life sign as it went through. He also didn't 
notice the melee of people swinging at each other with 
pool cues and bar stools that spilled out of the front 
door into the street. Neither did he see the bar 
tender take a loaded .44 that he kept under the bar 
for emergencies that never happened and blow away his 
fiancee and five of his loyal patrons.
        
     Dana Scully wanted to do anything but stand in a 
sweltering small southern town and look at a bloody 
crime scene that stretched so far down the main street 
that she and her partner Fox Mulder had to walk around 
in the sun for a half hour just to see all the blood 
stains that seemed to be everywhere. They were on the 
sides of shops, smeared around ornate old style light 
poles and puddled up in the gutters dried to a dull 
brown by the insistent Georgia sun. She feared ruining 
a suit of good clothes with the sweat that had begun 
rolling in large drops from every pore in her body the 
minute she stepped out of the air conditioned car and 
hadn't stopped yet. A bead ran down her back and gave 
her the icky feeling that bugs were under her shirt. 
She squirmed and her sunglasses slipped a little 
farther down her nose. A nice cool morgue sounded good 
to her and she knew if she could just keep from 
screaming a little while longer that it would be her 
next destination.
            A plainclothed southern police detective was 
explaining to them the details of some grisly murders 
as he saw it. " Now this is where we believe Mr. Davis 
repeatedly beat Mr. Carp's head at which point Mr. 
Carp died," he said, pointing at the bloodied and 
dented edge of a public mail box that still had hair 
stuck to it. He stared down at the grisly sight for a 
second and a look of revulsion began to creep over his 
face. Looking up at the two FBI agents he saw what 
seemed to him to be the wide eyed faces of curious 
children staring back at him, not affected a bit by 
the gore beheld by them. " What? Why I....I don't know 
how to do that," he said shaking his head. " I guess 
when you've seen everything..." he trailed off and ran 
a hanky over his reddening forehead.
      " That's all right, detective," said Fox Mulder 
reaching out and touching his shoulder, "We're 
affected, it's just the heat. We don't function 
normally in this kind of weather. Is this the last 
one? Can we go inside for awhile?"
        "Yeah, that's the last of it," he said, looking to 
his left at the crime scene tape that stretched across 
the street a few feet to his left. "Why don't we go 
over to the soda fountain and get something cool?  
There's air conditioning in there," he said, motioning 
back up the street the way they had come, two blocks 
up to the ice cream place just on the other side of 
the yellow crime scene tape that blocked off that end 
of the street.
     They walked back up the street past the blood stains 
and chalk outlines of murdered people on the ground. 
They walked past a police photographer carefully 
taking pictures of all the grisly details and they 
ducked under the yellow crime scene tape and past the 
throng of uniformed policemen and reporters and ducked 
into the cool pink and blue confines of the old 
fashioned ice cream shop.
      "Whew," Said Dana, wiping the sweat from her brow 
with a hanky after she stepped inside. She turned to 
Fox and said, "I'm going into the restroom to freshen 
up."
    "Okay," he said. "We'll be right here."
She turned and walked down to the other end of the room and 
disappeared into a doorway.
Fox and the plainclothed detective seated themselves on 
stools at the counter and a middle aged lady in a pink 
and blue striped skirt with an apron over it and a 
matching hat with a white blouse managed to peel 
herself away from staring out the front window at all 
the commotion, walked behind the bar and said to them 
in her rich southern accent, "What can I get you 
gentlemen ?"
       Fox smiled at her from across the counter and said, 
"I'll have two ice waters, please." Fox looked at the 
detective seated next to him. He was leaning over the 
counter scanning the ice cream displayed in the 
freezer like a school kid. "Umm,... Hmm," he said, a 
big smile on his face. He seemed freshly oblivious to 
the carnage outside. Fox thought back to the revulsion 
he had seen on the detectives face looking at the 
bloodied mailbox and he realized that while he and 
Dana used their cold analytic professionalism to 
supersede the chilling effects of what they saw on the 
job, Detective Kellogg merely used ice cream. Or 
perhaps he was just a big kid. "Uh, yeah. I'll have a 
double scooper of rocky road and pistachio, honey. 
Pistachio on the bottom. Thanks." he said to her.
   "Sugar cone ?" She asked, turning to where the cones are 
kept.
Bigger smile, "You bet," and a wink. She busied herself 
making the treat and Kellogg watched fervently. Fox 
sipped his water.
    "I guess you all are cops, huh?" the waitress said as 
she smooshed the first scoop into the cone.
 "Yep. Georgia State Police." the southern detective said 
proudly.
    "You too?" she said at Fox.
"No ma'am. FBI." said Fox.
         "Oh, really?" she said, impressed. She gave Fox a 
smile. He smiled back. The smile on detective 
Kellogg's face faded proportionally. His thunder 
stolen. Oh, but there was ice cream. His smile quickly 
returned as he watched her dig into the freezer for a second scoop.
    "What happened out there?" she asked, mostly to Fox as 
she smooshed the second scoop onto the other, working 
the scooper  up and down a little to make it stick.
      "Nothing good," Fox said and took a sip of his ice 
water.
"We think there was something of a disagreement early this 
morning. Some kind of fight out on the street," said 
Kellogg. Fox raised an eyebrow to this understatement 
and sipped his water.
   "Well, I'll tell you it sounded like a war going on out 
there," she said handing the cone over. "Not that I 
could sleep anyway what with it being so hot out.
 Fox put down his water. "You heard this last night?"
"Sure, I live right over this shop. I thought it was a bar 
brawl that spilled out into the street. It's happened 
before," she said.
  "You didn't call the police?" asked Mulder.
"No. I knew Bobby Ray would call. He always does if he 
can't stop it himself," she said.
"Bobby Ray?" Said Fox.
"The bartender. We're good friends. I just don't drink that 
much or I might've been there too," she said and she 
glanced behind her and straightened her little striped 
hat in the mirror.  
Just then, Dana walked up and seated herself next to Fox. 
"I didn't think I would ever stop sweating," she said 
to him. "Is this my water?"
"Mmm hmm," acknowledged Fox and he looked back at the 
waitress, "Did you happen to look out your window?"
     "No, not after the noise started. I can't stand to 
watch men fight. They're so stupid, it just makes me 
sick," she said, a little emotion creeping into her 
voice.
     "You said after the noise started, did you look out 
the window before?" asked Fox. Dana sat there drinking 
her water and listening from the stool next to him.
   "Well, honey. Like I said it was hot and I was over at 
the window  getting a little air and went back to bed 
just before the ruckus started," she said and got a 
concentrated look on her face as she thought back. 
"Let's see. Do I remember anything? Oh, yeah. I guess 
just before I went back to bed a car drove off from 
the bar."
      "What kind of a car was it?" asked Fox.
"Well, I don't know. It was sort of a sedan I guess. Small, 
kind of boxy looking. American I think. Might've been 
blue, I couldn't say."
      "Four door, two door ?"
"I really couldn't say. Sorry," she said.
     "That's okay, honey." said Kellogg. "I just happen to 
have a big book in the trunk of my car that has lotsa' 
pictures of cars for you to look at to see if you can 
pick one out. You mind?"
  "Not at all," she said.
Detective Kellogg looked at the two agents seated next to 
him and said, "I just thought I'd bring that book with 
me, it didn't do me any good up in Troy Falls but I 
figured I might save some time if I didn't bring it 
back to the station." 
 Dana looked past Fox at the man and said, "Troy Falls. Was 
that a lot like this is here?"
       "Yeah," he replied, "Strange, a kind of thing like 
this happening at all. Let alone in two towns and this 
close to each other.
      "Three towns," corrected Fox. "This is the third in a 
string of three towns that have had this kind of 
random senseless violence occur in them in the past 
two days.
       "Yeah, I heard about that up there in South 
Carolina, I guess you're right. That's right on the 
same highway. Strange," Kellogg said, his eyes 
glassing up and he turned his head and stared out the 
window toward the crime scene.
  "From what I hear Elmford was the worst one," offered 
Dana. "After what I saw out there, I'm finding that a 
little hard to believe. Can you think of any 
explanation for this kind of thing, Mulder ?"
     "No," Fox said. "But I can tell you there's nothing to 
be served right now by going to the morgue. We know 
those people died violent deaths. I think we need to 
get on the road. If we are going to find any clues to 
this, whatever it may be, I think our best bet is to 
visit those other two towns and sniff around a 
little."
     "Sounds good to me," agreed Dana, even though she had 
been looking forward to the deep coolness of a body 
storage to recover from the outside heat. She turned 
to Kellogg and asked, "Have there been toxicology 
tests on the victims?"
"Yes," he answered, "But they didn't find anything but 
alcohol and, in some, a few of the more common illicit 
drugs. A little pot, some coke. Nothing unusual."
"Okay, will you call us if you find out what kind of car 
that was or anything else ?" said Fox to Kellogg as he 
got up to leave.
    "Sure. I'll walk out with you so I can get the auto ID 
book." He crunched the last of his sugar cone down and 
got up from his stool to follow them outside.
   "We go East out on this main road, right ?" asked Dana 
after they had walked outside.
           Detective Kellogg wiped his mouth and cleared 
his throat before answering. "Ahem, uh, yeah. Just 
straight thata'way," he said gesturing down the road. 
"Oh and y'all be careful of them war reenactors out in 
the woods out there. It's a big month for them and 
they're out there in force just marchin' every which 
way. We've almost had a few accidents. Them boys get 
so caught up in it all, ya'know."
   "Sure, thanks," said Fox and they walked out through and 
past the reporters and police cars to their own 
vehicle. When they got in, Fox started the motor and 
turned on the air conditioning. He pulled out into the 
road and drove east down the highway headed for Troy 
Falls where they would take a grisly tour of the 
savaged downtown and then head on to Elmford S.C. and 
inspect another bad scene. It was late afternoon when 
they finally got back in their car after inspecting 
Elmford. They sat there in silence for a few minutes, 
letting the three grisly scenes they had been witness 
to, after the fact, sink in.
   Finally, Dana said as she fiddled with the controls on 
the air conditioning, "If we go back and stake out the 
next two towns or so down the road from the last town 
this occurred, maybe we'll be able to pick up on 
something tonight." She looked over at Fox. He 
appeared to be deep in thought. "Well?"  she said.