episode by Sara Charno
summary by Pellinor
Internal dating: No date given. If internal dates follow air-date order, this case and two others should all be crammed into the latter half of March 1995, after Mulder and Scully are recovered from "Dod Kalm."
Lincoln Park, Murray, Virginia. The Holvey family is having a day out in the park - foreign-looking mother, Maggie; father, Steve; toddler, Teddy, and eight-year-old Charlie. Charlie is bitterly resentful when his younger brother gets all the attention and loses then Charlie's balloon.
Inside the bathroom, the younger boy's balloon floats out of his hands and out of the window. When the mother gets out of the cubicle, the boy's reins are on the floor, but the boy is gone. He is then seen following the balloon as it leads across the miniature train tracks. As Charlie watches dispassionately, the little boy is hit by the train, whose brakes won't work, and is killed.
Three months later, Mulder tells Scully about the case. The inquest found nothing unusual, but the person performing it called in Mulder as he was disturbed by a chance snap taken by a by-stander. This picture shows a helium balloon travelling away from the boy, rather than floating straight up as they should. (Mulder: "the one thing I did learn in kindergarten is that if you let them go they float up up and away." Scully: "Did you learn about wind in kindergarten?") Mulder consults "Chuck" - Dr Charles Burks at the University of Maryland, "king of digital imaging." Using computer wizardry he enhances the picture and finds a ghostly image holding the balloon. "So you're saying that a ghost killed Teddy Holvey?" Scully asks sceptically. Chuck and Mulder smile smugly, pointing at the screen. Scully dismisses it as a trick of light and shadow, but Mulder also challenges her to explain how the little boy got out of his very secure reins.
Mulder and Scully go to the Holvey house. An old woman watches them arrive, her face enigmatic and grim. Teddy's parents say there has already been an inquest and they don't know why they should answer questions again, but Mulder persists, asking if they have ever wondered if anyone guided Teddy onto the tracks. While they are protesting the impossibility of this, Scully sees the older boy outside the room and slips out. As she watches, the older woman draws a swastika on his hand. Mulder asks the parents if they've seen any odd things in the house - objects moving and the like - but the smoke alarm goes off at that moment and the lights go out. The older woman, Charlie's grandmother, comes in and speaks wildly in a foreign language, holding Charlie protectively. "You marry a devil, you have devil child," she says, in English, before going out.
Mulder researches the swastika and finds it's an ancient symbol of protection. Scully agrees that Charlie may need protection, but thinks it's protection from an adult, not a ghost. She thinks the grandmother suffers from Munchaussen-by-Proxy, by which parents or other care-givers induce medical symptoms in their children as a means of getting attention. In his two-year life, Teddy Holvey was admitted to hospital ten times, for illnesses of no known cause. Since Teddy's birth, which also coincided with Mrs Holvey's mother coming to stay, Charlie has also suffered from injuries and ailments.
Mulder and Scully talk to Mr Holvey, who works at the State Department. He says he met his wife in Romania, but Golda, her mother, opposed the marriage. Things were okay until she came to live with them two years ago and started filling the house with rituals and superstitions. She had called Charlie evil to his face, but also seems to dote on him and fear for him. He says that he's even wondered if she was the one who released Charlie from his reins. Scully suggests that a professional counsellor interview the child.
Scully's suggestion causes arguments in the Holvey house. Maggie Holvey opposes taking Charlie away for counselling, but the father prevails. As they are trying to drive out of the garage, the door jams. Trying to repair it, Mr Holvey's tie gets caught in the mechanism and he is hanged. Charlie screams in horror. Mulder and Scully rush inside but the man is dead.
The police find a dead rooster and lots of candles in Golda's room, and Mulder finds black ash everywhere on the car and garage. Scully thinks Charlie is at risk and they should get a social worker in as soon as possible. Just then the garage door opens and Golda, Charlie and some men in black suits and hats are standing there. Golda orders Mulder and Scully to leave.
The ash is analysed in the Chem lab, and is found to contain nothing at all - nothing organic, metallic or anything. According to the technicians, this ash doesn't exist," Mulder says. He takes it to Chuck, who says he last saw it in India in 1979 when on the hippie trail. It's "holy ash," which materialises out of thin air when a person's energy is transported to another location. Mulder thinks this energy was what opened the garage door, but Scully thinks it was the old lady.
The old lady and the men in black perform a ritual with the roosters and the candles. Charlie listens at the door. As they chant, a boy's figure takes shape in the smoke.
Karen Kossoff, the FBI social worker seen in "Irresistible", visits the Holvey house. Just as she arrives, Charlie cries out and is found collapsed at his grandmother's door, as smoke issues from the room. Maggie Holvey orders the men from the house. They bow, take off their robes, and leave. She then orders her mother to leave as well, but the old lady grabs Charlie and pulls him into the room and locks the door. She is about to cut the boy's hand with her knife, saying "it is the only way," but a force throws her across the room. The boy then stands over her with the roosters, chanting as they peck her to death.
Charlie complains no memory of the event. The coroner says the old lady died of a heart attack but Scully says it looks as if her eyes were pecked out. Mulder studies the ritual things in the room and things they had been trying to protect the house from whatever was wrong.
The old men arrive but Maggie Holvey throws them out. She tells Mulder and Scully they are the "Calusari", responsible for the correct observance of religious beliefs, and that they said it isn't over yet - that there is still evil in the house. Mulder goes after them, and they tell him the evil in the house has been there, in many different guises, since the dawn of time. It will kill again, and if Mulder tries to stop them the blood will be on his hands.
Maggie Holvey says she had thought her mother had put a curse on her for abandoning the old ways, but that the ritual was trying to cleanse the house of evil. Her mother thought Charlie was responsible for everything that happened.
Karen Kossoff returns to talk to Charlie about what happened in his grandmother's room. He gets angry and upset, shouting that it wasn't him - he didn't do it. "It was Michael!" he says. Maggie looks shocked and says that Michael was Charlie's still-born town, but that Charlie had never been told of this. Her mother wanted to perform the ritual of separation, saying that it was the only way to stop the world of the death following Charlie through life, but they wouldn't let her. Suddenly Charlie has some sort of seizure.
Charlie is taken to the hospital, where the doctor is unable to determine what's wrong with him. As a nurse tends to him, an identical boy materialised behind her and creeps up on her. "Michael! Don't do it!" Charlie shouts, but the other boy hits the nurse over the head.
In the visitor's room, Maggie is awakened by her son, who says he wants to go home. "I want to go home - now," he insists.
Scully sees them leaving from a window, but when they go to Charlie's room they find he's still in the bed. The dazed nurse says she saw two identical boys. Mulder says Mrs Holvey has left with the wrong boy - the evil one - and sends Scully to the house, whole he goes to "get help."
Maggie Holvey is disturbed by her son's cruel words about Teddy's death, and seems to realise what is happening. She goes to her mother's room and does some sort of divining ritual. "Don't let it be true," she mutters, but her worst fears are obviously confirmed for, when her son comes into the room, she raises a knife against him.
Mulder gets the Calusari and bring them to Charlie's hospital room. They start performing some ritual on him, and he starts to thrash around and hiss and shout. Mulder helps hold him down, looking anxious and unsure of what to do. Yellow liquid starts to run down the walls.
Scully lets herself into the Holvey house, and goes to the old lady's house. There is a strong wind and pictures start smashing. Maggie Holvey, chanting, is pinned to the wall near the ceiling, and Scully herself is thrown across the room by an invisible force.
The ritual continues and gets more intense. Mulder, disturbed, lets go for a while, but is told to carry on holding the boy down.
The boy raises a knife above Scully and prepares to bring it down, but at the last minute Charlie falls back against the hospital bed and all is silent, in both places.
"It is over, fro now," the Calusari elder tells Mulder and Scully. "But you must be careful. It knows you."
Mulder writes his report, saying the case, which he puts down to possession, is unsolved. He says he's disturbed at the suggestion that "neither innocence nor vigilance may be protection against the horror at heart of evil." (I can't make this bit out. It could be "howling heart of evil," perhaps. Can anyone help?)