episode by Howard Gordon
summary by Pellinor
Internal dating: Should be January 1995, if internal order follows air-date order, but it could be any time. This whole section of the season is horribly messed up, as "Irresistible shows."
Folkstone, North Carolina. A soldier, Jack McAlpin, acts moody, to the evident concern of his wife. She asks him if he had "those awful dreams" again, and wants him to go to the doctor. He shouts at her to shut up, making her and their baby cry. Suddenly he seems to see maggots in his breakfast. Panicking , he drives away, but crashes into a tree when he sees a decomposing face in the rear-view mirror. There is a strange symbol on the tree.
Mulder tells Scully about the case, saying the military calls the death a suicide - the second in a the last two weeks. The soldiers were all stationed at the local Immigration and Naturalisation processing centre, where there was a riot the previous month in which a ten-year old boy died. McAlpin's wife called in the FBI when she refused to believe the military's explanation. They stop at the tree and look at the symbol, which Mulder tells Scully is voodoo, adding that most of the refugees at the camp are from Haiti.
Mrs McAlpin says her husband changed after being transferred to the camp, becoming angry all the time. She doesn't believe in voodoo - and her husband definitely didn't - but has found out that the symbol on the tree is the same as the symbol found at the scene of the other "suicide." Even so, she only got suspicious when her son found the same sign on a large shell buried in a sand box.
Mulder and Scully go to the camp, which is heavily guarded. A man grabs Scully, talking fast to her in words she can't understand, but a small boy pushes him away and offers to sell her a charm to protect her. Scully refuses, but Mulder buys it for her.
The camp commander, Colonel Wharton, is hostile to their investigation, saying the suicides were caused by stress. "We're soldiers, not prison guards," he says, saying how difficult it is to police a hostile population without adequate resources. "They hate us," he says, of the refugees. He also tells them about the riot, saying it was caused by a refugee called Pierre Bauvais.
Scully, with a signed consent form from McAlpin's wife, goes to the morgue to examine McAlpin's body. The doctor says he didn't do an autopsy since the man was so obviously dead, his neck nearly severed and his chest crushed. To his horror, when they open the drawer, the body has been replaced with the body of a dog.
A private Dunham, one of McAlpin's friends, leads Mulder to Bauvais. On the way, Mulder asks him some questions about McAlpin, but he says "I can't say." Dunham stands guard while Mulder talks to Bauvais, who's in prison. Mulder asks him about the voodoo symbol, which he says is a "vever", representing the "cross-roads between two worlds - the mirror in which a man must confront his true self". Maybe the marines didn't like what they saw, he suggests. He talks of freedom, saying Wharton won't let them return home, which is all they ask. When Scully comes in, Bauvais tells Mulder she's come to say McAlpin has gone, much to her amazement. He says they've been warned once and won't be warned again. "After that, no magic can save you," he says.
Mulder and Scully talk in the car as they drive to their motel (and Scully is driving). Scully thinks Bauvais switched the bodies, although security, both in Bauvais's cell and in the morgue, is very tight. Voodoo is based on fear and intimidation, she says, citing Bauvais's threats. Mulder plays with the charm, hanging it from the dashboard, but she says it has more power than a pair of fuzzy dice.
Suddenly their conversation is but short when a man walks in front of the car. It is McAlpin - alive but unresponsive. Looking at his medical records later, Scully notices high levels of tetrodotoxin in his blood - a poison obtainable from puffer fish (and frogs). Mulder talks about zombies, and the theory that they are caused by small doses of tetrodotoxin, which causes paralysis and suppresses breathing and heart-beat to such an extent that a victim can be mistaken for dead. He wonders if the other allegedly dead marine is also alive.
Mulder and Scully go to the grave yard to look for Private Guttierez, having got an order from the judge to exhume the body. The graveyard attendant says they've arrived too late, for body snatchers have taken the body first. "This is uncool," he says. While they are talking, Scully notices a young boy digging at another grave and Mulder grabs him. It's the boy who sold them the charm, and his bag is full of frogs.
The boy, who's called Chester Bonaparte, says he can come and go as he pleases from the camp. He used to collect frogs to sell to Bauvais for his "magic". Scully says the frogs contain a substance similar to that they found in McAlpin's body.
Mulder notices they've been followed by a man in car. He creeps out and grabs the man, who turns out to be Dunham. Dunham says he couldn't talk in the camp, not with Bauvais near, but he also seems to be scared of Chester. "You're putting yourself right in the middle of something you don't understand," he says, telling them Bauvais warned the Colonel he'd take his men's souls one by one unless the Colonel let them back to Haiti. Instead the Colonel ordered beatings and cruelties. Dunham, who tells a story of how his fianc�e died of no known cause after her father was cursed, thinks voodoo is behind everything.
After Dunham leaves, Chester runs away into a dock area. Mulder gives chase and seems to have Chester cornered at the end of the dock, but when he gets there all he can see in a black cat.
Wharton tells Mulder and Scully he's filed a complaint with the Justice Department about their attempted exhumation of the body. When they tell him the body had gone, he says it was "them" again. He denies ill-treating the refugees, saying if anyone's being ill-treated it's his men. After Mulder and Scully go, he returns to his breakfast, but seems to see blood oozing out of it.
Mulder thinks Wharton's left the refugees no choice but to fight back by the only weapon they have - voodoo. Scully agrees they may think they're doing voodoo, but doesn't think they really have any powers. As she turns the key to start the car she cuts her hand on a thorn left under the steering wheel, but insists it's nothing. The vever sign is shown under their car as they drive away.
Wharton has Bauvais beaten. "I want the secret," he demands. "Your life is in my hands."
Mulder receives a coded message from X and goes to meet him. "I'd assumed our last contact would be our last," Mulder says, referring to "One Breath". X tells him the military are going to seal off the area in 24 hours and Mulder and Scully will be thrown out. "These people have no rights," he says. "The statue of liberties is on vacation." The refugees won't be allowed to settle in the country, but Wharton won't let them return either. When he was in Haiti himself, two of his men killed themselves, and he's trying to get revenge. Mulder is angry, saying the military shouldn't be sanctioning Wharton's private revenge, especially against innocent civilians. X says that by the time the Senate can get a committee together, "it will be as if none of this has ever happened. "
Scully, rubbing at the cut on her hand and peering anxiously into the mirror, tries to call Dunham on the phone. When she goes to Mulder's room to tell him Dunham's missing, she finds no sign of Mulder, but Dunham dead in Mulder's bath. Mulder comes in just then, holding McAlpin at gunpoint. He'd found him wandering round outside, with a bloody page in his hand.
Later, they question McAlpin, who has no memory of anything, even though he's signed a confession to killing Dunham. Mulder accuses Wharton of coercing him to sign the confession, and demands to speak to Bauvais, but Wharton says Bauvais is dead, having cut his wrists with a bed spring.
Mulder and Scully visit Mrs McAlpin, who tells them Dunham came to see her the previous night, asking for help. He gave her a sealed envelope, which she hands over to them. Inside are photos showing Wharton and Bauvais together at a voodoo ceremony.
They visit Wharton's office, finding it deserted. In his drawer they find that both Dunham and McAlpin had filed complaints against Wharton for his treatment of the refugees. They also find Guttierez's body. A soldier finds them and threatens them, but they convince him that it was Wharton who killed Dunham and Guttierez.
Mulder and Scully rush to the ceremony where Bauvais was buried. Wharton is there, dressed in long robes, and is dragging Bauvais' body out of the ground while preparing for some sort of ritual. Mulder goes in alone, leaving Scully in the car as she doesn't feel well. She sits in the car, staring at the cut in her hand which suddenly seems to start oozing and to have fingers sticking out of it. As Scully screams, seeing a man chanting threateningly at her, Mulder demands that Wharton drop the knife. Instead, Wharton drives it into the ground, and Mulder collapses as if stabbed in the stomach. Suddenly Bauvais stands up behind Wharton and confronts him, making him collapse. At the same time, Scully clutches at the charm and everything returns to normal in an instant.
Scully rushes to the grave and finds Mulder trying to sit up. "I feel better than you look," she says, when he asks how she is. Wharton is dead, she tells him. "Did you kill him?" she asks, but he says it was Bauvais, although he's still lying in his coffin, seemingly undisturbed.
The refugees are being shipped out, and there are plans to get Bauvais's body returned to Haiti as well. Scully looks for Chester Bonaparte, but is told he was killed in the riot the previous month.
Wharton is buried, but is seen alive in his coffin, crying to be let out.