Title: Hoodoo 5 of ? 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? Dana thought for a second. Then she said, "We-e-ell, he hasn't crashed into anybody yet." "Okay then," Fox said and unbuckled his seatbelt to get out of the car. So did Dana, and they both got out. As they walked up to the store he said, "Got any money on ya'?" "Hey, it's your plan," said Dana. After Mulder and Scully left the liquor store they went down the highway to where Fox had encountered the hoodoo and began searching for his daytime hiding place starting there. They drove along at about forty miles per hour mostly but they slowed and stopped a lot along the way to take a closer look for the little blue car they expected to find parked somewhere among the trees and bushes along the highway. It was getting to be late afternoon when Fox climbed a big oak tree and looked through binoculars at another expanse of land along a road leading off the highway. "I think I've got something here," he yelled down to Dana. She lowered the binoculars from her eyes and looked up at him. She could see he was climbing down out of the tree so she waited until he was on the ground to speak. "What is it?" she asked. "Blue car, sticking out of some bushes up that dirt road a ways," he said as he walked to the car. "If it's him, I'll just sneak up and put the groceries on the hood. He ought to find them there." "Don't you think that might make him a little suspicious?" Dana asked as she slid into the driver's seat. "I don't think he'll argue with free booze," Fox said. They drove down to the dirt road and turned right onto it. Then they reconned the area and figured out the best way for Fox to sneak up to the car. Having figured this out, they pulled over and Fox carried the bag of groceries down the road to where the blue car was. He snuck around the side of it and peeked into the window. Amidst the litter of the back seat he saw a thin balding man curled up in the fetal position asleep. The inside of the car was a shambles and as Fox looked on in fascination at the terribly torn upholstery, the sleeping man let loose a piteous wail and began to spasm and thrash about, stirring up the trash, liquor bottles and clothes. Fox retreated into the bushes and waited until he stopped making noise. Then he crept to the front of the car and put the bulging bag onto the hood directly in front of the steering wheel. As he turned to go, though, he noticed that the driver's side window was gone and the broken glass hung out on the door on a few tattered rags of safety glass sheeting. He went back to the car and removed the bag from the hood and instead, ever so gently put it through the bare window onto the driver's seat and he slunk back into the bushes. Back at the car, Dana waited for him behind the wheel. He opened the door and got in. "All set," he said, "We just have to sit and wait for night and then we can follow him at a healthy distance to where I'm sure he'll be going in the morning. See if you can pull the car behind something where we won't be seen." "Okay, " Dana said, "I think there's a place over here where we might be able to see through the bushes to the car." "Yes, right here." she added as she shut off the car and they both peered through the bushes at the little blue car parked there. "I don't see the bag," Dana said, "Did you set it on the hood?" Fox grinned underneath the binoculars he was looking through and said, " It's on the front seat." "The big Kahuna hotdogs again huh?" Dana said. Fox shrugged,"The window was open." Dana reached down and adjusted her seat to recline,"I've been thinking. This Hoodoo thing sounds sort of familiar and the way the eyes thing works. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul and according to the three sisters...Were....Are they sisters? Anyway she said that a thing that looked like a bat somehow came out of some willow roots and latched onto the poor slaves soul as he lay dying so it could use it for it's own ends. Right?" Fox continued peering out at the car without his spyglasses and said "Okay." "Well, what if...." Dana continued, "The bat thing, the hoodoo was not a hoodoo at all as we know it-or don't-as it were but was the built up collective repressed feelings and desires of the slave and perhaps other slaves as well, feelings such as hate, pain and despair, and unrequited desires, chief amongst them the desire for revenge. Revenge against those who had taken every other desire from them" "Whoa"said Mulder "Who's being spooky now?" Dana looked at him surprisedly and not displeased. She went on,"They say that when you repress a desire, even the desires we repress everyday like say, choking the crap out of someone who desperately needs it..." Fox turned and raised one analytical eyebrow toward Dana and she smiled suppressing a laugh. "You know," she said. Foxes changed his face to wordlessly express that "Oh boy does he know" and let Scully continue,"They say when you repress it doesn't go away, it's more like filling a bag with these feelings and dragging them behind you. It becomes like another part of you, a shadow part of you, hidden and they say it grows stronger if not dealt with and can overcome a person's conscious psyche to the point that they do things without realizing; in an unconscious fashion. Anyway, what if the baggage was too much for the slave to carry and his will to survive too strong to let him act out his desires in a way which surely would have gotten him killed and his shadow self not only broke off from his psyche but from his vessel, his body, as well and then found refuge in the one place strong enough to contain it, the roots of a nearby tree as the sisters said." Dana glanced at fox to see if he was listening, his pensive gaze assured her, "There it sat getting stronger and stronger as time passed. Waiting for the day when it would be free to carry out it's desires?" She looked at Fox again,"It's just a theory," she added. "A genius theory, that could really explain a lot," said Mulder. "For instance, why hadn't the hoodoo claimed a dying soul before when we know that with the kind of abuse all these slaves must have suffered at the hands of this Cole they probably died on a regular basis? And was it just coincidence that three young girls were on hand to be used as new vessels for the disembodied? That's two bodies in use, one for the shadow soul and one for the slaves. Who is the third for? Cole hunter? Is he being kept alive too so that someday the shadow can fulfill it's destiny and have revenge? It brings also to mind poultergeists that wreak havoc in buildings where traumas have occurred, are these merely the lost shadows of long dead wretches still trying to seek some satisfaction long after their parent souls have gone to their rewards? Actually it might help to explain the intermittencies of poultergeist action, sudden outbursts and then nothing where the shadow has gone back into the dark where it can grow strong enough for another tantrum. they also occur around children, children who because of their youth aren't strong enough to contain the shadow and it breaks free from it's creator like the slave's did. We know that people's personalities can split in times of stress, are these merely shadow personalities and how many other phenomena might be explained by an amoeba-like splitting off of humans' psyches when we all know that evolution can basically be attributed to stresses of one kind or another on a life form that bring about change. We are the highest life form on the planet and still we have myriad stresses and reasons for shadows to form that we can't seem to rid ourselves of in order to make our lives easier which, when you look at it is the end result of evolution. Also, are there forces beyond our control whose job it is to supply these stresses on us so that we are forced to march ceaselessly forward and will there come some great seventh day when we will be able to rest and enjoy what we've become? Also, what about the slaves, being mostly African and Africa is where humanity is supposed to have originated could we then assume that slavery in god's great new country was their punishment for not leaving Eden? And what if...." "Whoa! Stop it now, you're getting all biblical on me." Dana interjected, "I thought you believed in the alien seed theory of life?" Fox smiled at her, "Just covering all the bases, babe." . "Well,you better not do that in public or people will be coming out to picket you someday." Scully gave a wry smile and fox grinned back. They both knew that when his mind and mouth got going at the same time pure thought spilled out and it was the secondary thought that determined a conclusion so he wasn't to blame for anything he might say in the first place while letting his partner in on the thought process. They stared out at a field to their right through the scrubby bushes which their car was concealed in. It was planted in long rows of bush bean plants about two feet high. The lowering sun reflected back at them from the shiny sides of the yellow wax beans that hung half concealed by heart shaped leaves. Mulder turned his head and looked out of the left side of the windshield to where he could see the blue car in between more scrubby bushes and small trees. Scully continued staring out at the subtle beauty of the beanfield in a half meditative state. "You said something about the way the eyes work?" Mulder questioned. "Yes," she said, eyes still staring at the bean rows. "Look at young children, how they learn They soak up lessons like a spongue. That's life lessons of course, from their parents and siblings, we say things rub off on them and they can become so much like say, a father or someone close to them that some would say it has to be more than just basic five sense stimuli that brings this about. It's almost as if a program was downloaded into a specific set of neurons from the same pairings of neurons in another person's, a role model's head. A hypnotist is able to make a person cluck like a chicken by using the eyes in a conscious effort to bring a change upon his subject. Do we know how this works? Is it more than suggestion? We know it only lasts so long, that it continually needs to be reinforced before it "Burns" in. The people affected by the hoodoo are affected just long enough it seems to do some major damage and then it wears off, like a release of energy in the heat of a passionate argument before you realize how loud and inconsiderate you're being." Fox wanted to interrupt her with a smart comment about how inconsiderate it is to bash someone with a brick but decided better of it. "And a s a baby reaches out for love perhaps it also sends out a signal of some kind that touches off these psychic downloads by reaching into the mind of another. And what if, the baby was a grown man that had had every chance taken away from him to exist in a normal manner and was still just merely a child inside whose psychic yearnings which had multiplied in power by being repressed unanswered in a shadow form still reached out at any individual he hoped could help him with a message of how his life was. Basically a cry for help downloaded into the normal human mind overloading it, sending it into a frenzy of violent, vengeful behaviour. The thoughts you spoke of when you were under it's influence just goes to show that it probably overloads the same areas in our brains where we all store our regretful incidents in life. All merely because we are all basically helpful people" She turned her head from the window and looked at Fox. He had that same pensive look and she thought he was going to go into another rambling theoretical discourse like he had before. "Good intentions pave the road to hell," was all he said and they sat there in silence while the sun went down. They continued waiting until late that evening when Fox saw the blue car's dome light come on. He reached over and shook Dana awake by the shoulder. She looked up at him. "It's alive," he said and she reached to the side to actuate the lever to make her seat go back up. As they sat there peering out , they saw the man get out of his car and do his business into a bush. Afterward, he went to the front door and opened it. He stood there a second and then leaned down into the car to inspect the shopping bag. Through the agent's open car window, they heard him say loudly, "Well' I musta' done something right last night." He climbed in and there was a "ker-chunk" as he closed the door. Through the bushes, the agents listened to the motor as it labored to start up. After the third try it fired and he revved it loudly to keep it going. The little four- banger idled rough and fast as it warmed up. Inside, under the dome light, the agents watched as the salesman took out one of the half-pint bottles of Kessler's, put it to his lips and tipped it up draining it completely before throwing it down onto the floor of the car. "He's not worried about cops, is he?" said Dana. The car suddenly zoomed out of it's hiding place, it's headlights splitting the night as it turned down the dirt road toward the highway. "Let's get going," said Fox and in another instant the headlights passed them on the dirt road, country music blaring through the open windows. "I think the only good thing in that car is the stereo," Fox said as he reached out to turn on the stereo to see if it was still the same station. "Yep," he said. Dana started the car and threw it into gear, lurched out of the bushes and turned onto the road with the headlights off. "Careful now, careful," Fox warned as he leaned forward and looked out at the taillights that were fading fast toward the highway. "I know what I'm doing," said Dana, keeping her eyes on the darkened road ahead. "I took a class in surveillance driving techniques." Just then, the car hit a bump in the road and bounced wildly and Dana wrestled the wheel for control. "Nice techniques!" said Fox as he gripped his seat tightly. "Armadillo," said Dana after she had gotten the car in control, "Could have happened to anyone." "Armadillos don't occur this far east," Fox said. "When it's this dark out," joked Dana, "How's it supposed to know how far east it is? "Just follow those taillights," said Fox. As the car they were following hit the highway heading North, there were still a few cars traveling on it so the agents felt fairly safe turning on their lights as they turned onto it. They followed for a few minutes when Dana said, " You know, he doesn't really have that far to go. And they do so occur throughout the South." "Yeah, I know," said Fox, "After he reaches Chickamauga, he'll probably hole up for the night. We'll just have to wait and see." "One thought occurs to me," said Dana, "Why didn't we keep any of that food for ourselves?" "Yeah! And some of that whiskey," said Fox with a grin. Fox had left the radio in the car playing and when the music ended Fox turned it up to listen to the DJ. His voice oozed out from the speakers, "Hey! Hey! This is Jay! Man, I hate to stop the music when it sounds so good on a warm Georgia night. But since all the nights are warm here, we'd never hear any news and there would be an information vacuum. Wharoooom! ( the sound of a vacuum cleaner comes on ) Hey! Hey! Shut that thing off, Clara. It'll just get dirty again. I've got a whole bag of tortilla chips and a bowl of salsa to spill and the night is young here in fish country. ( Boowhomp ) News! News! They want me to tell the news! So here's my version of it, politicians with their pants down, Middle East monarchs march into madness, ex-world powers wallow in confusion. Now for the stuff I think is important. Farmers are still finding bass lures stuck to their cows. Come on now folks, I fish therefore I am out a few bucks every time I buy one of these lures. How can you afford that? Get over it. According to the rules of sportsmanship and the fish and game laws of Georgia, the fish is supposed to willingly take the bait in it's mouth. Now I know that cows don't go around eatin' frogs and shiny wooden plugs so ya' must be snaggin' `em. Quit it! Ya' buncha' hicks. Oh' yeah, speakin' of hicks. Cole Hunter has not yet sought the seriously needed psychiatric help which would rid him of the urge to make a complete ass of himself. And, yes, I don't mean to advertise for him but he is still throwing his Pompous Picnic for Peanut Heads or would that be his Raucous Romp for racists ? At any rate, don't go there. As you know by now from our previous broadcasts, Cole's Cretinous Communion coincides with the Battle of Chickamauga Reenactment. It not only coincides with the time, but with the location as well. So you all's coming from the North to get to the reenactment, make sure you don't take a right instead of a left when you get to the entrance or you might find yourself in a movie you don't want to be in. If you're coming from the South, that's vice a versa for you. OH, hey! Word from our sponsor coming up, riiiggght....now." Fox turned the radio down. "That's funny," he said to Dana, "I was sure the car was going to go out of control again when Cole's name was mentioned." "Lucky it didn't," said Dana glancing to the side to look at Fox, "This car coming toward us was just passing it right about then." "Look out!" Fox yelled and reached out and pushed at the top of the steering wheel. Dana's head snapped forward and her hands clenched on the steering wheel as she finished Fox's actions and steered into the other lane to avoid by inches a head-on crash with the other car she had just mentioned. Dana expertly turned the car before it went off the road and, with a minimum of fish-tailing, brought it to a halt on the side of the road. "Wow!" said Fox sinking relievedly back into his seat. "Good driving." Dana's hands still white-knuckled the steering wheel. She looked at Fox with wide eyes, "If you hadn't pushed the wheel...." She took one hand off of the wheel and put it over her face and let out a relieved, "Whew !" Fox, meanwhile, took off his seatbelt and looked over the back of his seat and out the window. Instead of seeing the other car stuck in a beanfield as he had expected to however, it was about a hundred yards back and just spinning around in a cloud of dust on the shoulder to head back toward the agents. "Go! Go!" Fox yelled at Dana as he spun around and put his seatbelt on. "It's coming back and I don't think it's to apologize!" Scully looked into the rearview mirror and saw the car's headlights getting bigger. She threw the car into drive and floored it, aiming for the middle of the road. As the car behind them got closer, Dana began to veer from one shoulder to the other like a marine dodging bullets. Just as she nosed over the center line from the left, the car caught up with them and Dana dropped the auto shifter into second and hit the gas causing their car to lurch out of the way. The charging vehicle flew past where they were a second before and Scully hit the brakes. When she did, she looked at the other car as it went by. The dome light had come on and she saw two terrified children in the back seat, screaming and tugging at the woman driving in a desperate attempt to get her to stop. "Oh my god, Mulder! There are children in that car!" Scully said. They both watched in horror as the car's driver struggled to maintain control of the vehicle as she oversteered and it careened wildly back and forth across the highway. She came too close to going off the road when she hit her brakes and stopped dead, sideways in the road. Again, Fox and Dana let out a sigh of relief. They sat there looking at the car for a moment. "What should we do?" Said Dana. "I'm not sure..." Fox said and up ahead of them, the road which until now had been straight began to curve as it went along a series of hills. Three curves up Fox saw the unmistakable marker lights of a semi truck as it wound it's way toward them and the car stopped in the road. "....But we'd better do it fast!" And he pointed at the truck. Once again, Dana stepped on the gas and sped up the road to the car. She stopped before she got to it and left her lights to shine on it. She and Fox got out of the car and Fox ran up the road with a flashlight while Dana ran to the car. In the car, the driver slumped over the steering wheel sobbing and Dana knocked desperately on the window to get her attention. Meanwhile, Fox sprinted up the road in an attempt to gain enough yardage that the semi would have enough time to stop if it even paid attention to his warning. Back at the car, the two children in the rear seats, a boy and a girl, of about nine and ten were struggling to get out but the doors would not open. Their mother was not responding to Dana's knocking and she was beginning to fear that the truck would get there before they could get out. Dana realized that the car was probably equipped with a childproof feature that enabled the driver to lock the back doors with the front lock. It bothered her to think that a mother who cared about her children enough to worry that they might be hurt falling from the car would endanger them so terribly. She looked in the back window and motioned for the children to reach into the front and unlock the door. The little blonde-haired girl in pig- tails fearfully reached past her mom's seat and pulled the lever. Dana opened the rear door and the kids spilled out onto the road and clutched at her legs sobbing. Dana hustled them down the road to a tree along the side and told them to stay there and then she ran back to the car and began to wrestle the mother away from the steering wheel. As she did, The semi-truck was just rounding the last bend in the road and Fox waved his arms and flashlight at it from the side of the road. As it went by the driver glanced down at Fox and said, "What the...?" Before he turned his head straight and saw the car in the road ahead of him. He hit his brakes but he had a big load behind him and the big wheels screeched and groaned along the pavement as they strained to stop the big truck. Dana's reaction time quickened as she heard the big truck bearing down on them. She reached around the woman and unbuckled her seatbelt and the shoulder harness recoiled past her and she leaned in and grabbed the woman under her armpits. Dana bent her knees and with all of her strength kicked backwards and jerked the woman from the car. They both fell to the ground and Dana picked herself up and dragged the woman to the side of the road just as the semi hit the car with a crash and final screech of the brakes. The woman hanging limply in Dana's arms suddenly came to and began screaming for her children and they ran up the road to her and she slid from Dana's arms and slumped on the ground and embraced them tearfully. Red, blue and yellow lights from the police cars and tow trucks flashed through the rear window as Fox and Dana drove away from the accident scene. From the passenger seat, Dana said to Fox, "I don't think you could possibly lie to me now!" "About what?" Fox said. "After watching you lie to those cops, out there, I think I've got you pegged." Dana said with a sly look. "Oh yeah?" Said Fox, "There's a lot more to me than just a blank expression and a good story." `Oh sure! Just watch yourself." She said teasingly and then she added, "Actually, I can't quite shake the feeling of saying that the woman merely lost control of her car when she was really trying to run us down like dogs." "How does it feel that we loaded up a possessed alcoholic with booze and let him loose in a car out on a public highway?" said Fox. "And then we lose sight of him because he has the indiscriminate ability to turn ordinary people into psycho killers by staring at them?" "Okay," Dana said, "Just don't say that again, you almost broke through my ability to mentally block that fact out, ever since we bought that for him." "Ha, I knew you had to be relying on something other than your cold hard analytical disposition," Fox said and added, "You know, it's learned to drive." "What?" said Dana. "The hoodoo, the possessor. Judging by the fact that it didn't run off the road and managed to affect the woman's mind, I'd say it now has it's learners permit." "This can't be good," said Dana and leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. Fox continued driving until they reached Chickamauga a short time later and they managed to get a hotel room for the night since everybody who was in town for the reenactment was out sleeping in authentic troop tents. The next morning the agents rose early and began combing the countryside for the little blue car. They searched in all directions, working fast so they could get back to Cole's picnic. After they had looked down every road and in every field near the historic park with no luck, they decided to go back and wait by the entrances to the two events. When they got near the gate to the Historic park they saw a long line of cars and pick-up trucks slowly making their way into the parking lots near the visitor's center. On the opposite side of the highway from it was another entrance. A long metal pipe framed wire gate with a padlocked chain wrapped around a fence post guarded a private dirt road that cut it's way a couple of hundred yards through a green pasture and terminated in a grove of pine trees. Fox pulled the car over to the side of the highway where he could see both entrances. "So that must be where the Cole Hunter thing is going on. Do you think?" he said. Dana put down the binoculars she was using to eye the road in front of them and said, "The radio said it was right across from the park entrance, so that must be it." She put her binoculars to her eyes again and looked at the grove of trees at the end of the dirt road. "I can see a couple of cars back in those trees. Nothing else. If that's where it is, it hasn't started yet," she said and lowered the binocs and relaxed into her seat. "I guess we will just have to wait and see if he shows up," said Fox. "Here's something now." Dana said as she looked out of the car toward the trees. Fox looked past her to see a grey four-door sending up a cloud of dust behind it as it barreled up the road toward the gate. When it got there the driver slammed on the brakes and skidded to a halt sending more dust over the car to where it was obscured from view for a moment until the dust cloud drifted out over the cars on the highway. The agents watched as two men got out of the car. One of them walked over and unlocked the gate while the other opened the car's trunk and lifted something out of it. He carried it over to the gate where the other was waiting and they walked out to the fence on the outside and unfurled a long banner and began attaching it there. When they were done, they went back to the car and sat in it and waited. As Dana and Fox sat in their car they couldn't help but observe the changes in the people pulling into the park after the banner announcing Cole's picnic was hung. Some of them rolled up their windows and stared straight ahead while others rolled their windows down and yelled angrily and shook their fists at the two men sitting in the car. When this happened, one or the other of the two men would lazily stick his hand out of the window and display his middle finger to the shouter. Soon, some of the cars coming down the road began turning off into the private drive and stopping and talking through the windows to the men in the car. Afterwards, they would be given what looked like a flyer and be sent down the road toward the grove of trees. Some of the cars that pulled in, however, did not make it past the gate check and were sent back out the way they came. Most of these cars pulled over along the highway just past the fence banner and the people who emerged from them carried signs with anti-racist slogans and began congregating noisily on the highway just outside of the gate. They were joined by a small contingent of uniformed police officers who stayed just down the road from it all watching out for signs of trouble. Fox and Dana continued to sit in the car and watch. "I see they got their recommended sign slogans off of the internet," Fox said. Dana pointed out the windshield at a protester and said, "There's a new one. White Blight. Did you notice all of these protesters are white themselves? No wonder there's so much self loathing going on in..." "Hey, look at that." Fox cut her off suddenly. "Uh, oh, looks like trouble." Dana looked out at where the two men from the car walked out of the gate and into the midst of the protesters. They walked up to where a group of them were standing in front of the banner on the fence and began telling them to move away from it. The protesters stood their ground and the decibels rose as both sides verbally assaulted one another. A blue car suddenly drove past the agents and sped into the driveway and sped down the dirt road toward the trees. The two gate guards turned from their argument and ran back into the gate to their car and looked puzzled about what to do next. Should they watch the gate or go after the car. Fox answered their question for them by driving through the gate. The two men jumped out into the road and blocked his way. Fox pulled out his ID and held it up to the two men. "We don't recognize you," one of them said with a sneer. Fox squinted out the window from the sun and said, "We're not from around here."