"All in favor, aye." "Aye." "All right." "Starting Monday, the track around the athletic field will be closed to joggers at 8:30 p.m. instead of 10:00." "Any other items before we call it a night?" "Yeah." "Um..." "I got wind that for the spring drama production," "Howard Roberts intends to put on" "Jesus Christ Superstar." "You know how he is." "Howard's just trying to do things the kids like." "My point exactly." "Um, I don't think that play is appropriate for this high school." "Well, if he wants to be young," "I have no problems with Grease or Annie or..." "Doesn't Grease have the "F" word?" "Look, I'll talk to Howard." "Okay, let's adjourn till next week." "Deborah, why don't you lead us in the prayer." "Jim, the game is on." "It'll only take a minute." "We've been letting it slip." "Paul, why don't you get the door." "In the name of the lords of darkness, rulers of the earth, kings of the underworld," "I command the forces of darkness to bestow their infernal power upon me." "His is the hand that wounds!" "His is the place called Hell." "May the black powers of our forefathers make us strong." "Hail." "Hail the lords of darkness." "How much further?" "It's just up here a ways." "I heard the altar is a hollowed stump just up here." "Okay, when they get freaked..." "Yeah?" "...you get Kate, I take Andrea." "These mittens are giving me a Gingrich." "This is it." "Okay." "Okay, I need a personal object from everyone." "All right." "Now, Andrea, you're going to stand over here and face Jerry like this." "Closer." "Why like this?" "Well, that's so, uh... that's so that we're calling the spirits up of every direction." "Okay, now, Kate, you got to stand here and face me." "Do you really think someone used this place for black magic, or is it just a rumor?" "Come on, Dave." "Shh." ""In the name of the lords of darkness," ""rulers of the earth," ""kings of the underworld..." ""rise." "Rise to this place," uh..." ""Azazel..."" ""Know ye all who dwell in the light" ""of professed righteousness" ""that the others who know the keys and the angels have opened the gate."" " Come on!" " Forget this!" "Andrea!" "...the Lord is with thee." "Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus." "Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death..." "Andrea!" "Wait!" "Hunter found him early this morning." "He hasn't been dead for more than 12 hours." "They say this area is used for witches' ceremonies." "They?" "Well, everybody." "Anybody who lives around here knows about the things go on in this town." "They say there are people who control things." "Any evidence to substantiate those rumors, Sheriff Oakes?" "Well, Agent Scully, look at the body." "The eyes and heart have been cut out." "Many homicides involve victim desecration." "I know he and his friends listen to devil music." ""The Night Chicago Died"?" "You know what I mean." "Those heavy metal bands that influence kids." "Was Jerry Stevens or his friends ever witnessed participating in witchcraft?" "No." "More rumors." "This stump here is supposed to be the ceremonial altar." "What do you think?" "I think with a few turquoise chips, a picture of John Wayne, and three cans of shellac, it would make a pretty nice coffee table." "Well, you see all that wax?" "Someone's been burning candles in there." "Any idea who Jerry Stevens was with out here?" "Well, we assume he was alone." "Well, most people don't set out to drink two six-packs by themselves." "I also found this." "It has some purple ink on the edge, like a library identification stamp, and the end of the title says "in America."" "I'm surprised your people overlooked it." "I'm sorry." "I got to apologize here." "You're... you're right." "I admit we're a little rattled here." "That's why I called the FBI." "This may involve a deeper conspiracy." "See, I grew up around here, and ever since I was a kid, I heard stories." "This is a weird area." "It has a strange air that I could chalk up to imagination... till today." "I'll have my staff start checking libraries for you, Agent Scully." "Better hide your Megadeth albums." "Theories like that are why I can't take him seriously." "The homicide did have a ceremonial presentation-- the manner in which the body was displayed." "Mulder, I got the impression you didn't believe him either." "I didn't want to incite his already clearly aggravated imagination, but there is a weird feel to this place." "Maybe there's some truth to those rumors." "I think he incited your imagination." "I think this case is nothing more than a murderer taking advantage of local folklore." "I mean, there's nothing odd about..." "So..." "lunch?" "Mulder, toads just fell from the sky." "Guess their parachutes didn't open." "You were saying something about this place not feeling odd?" "The National Weather Service says there were tornadoes in Northern Massachusetts." "The wind probably picked up the animals into the storm." ""Witch Hunt:" "A History of the Occult in America."" "Last checked out to a Dave Duran." "Okay, people." "People, may I have your attention, please." "Mr. Kingery is out sick today, so I'll be substituting." "My name's Mrs. Paddock." "I'm going to take the roll..." "FBI." "We'd like to speak with a Dave Duran." "Come on." "I'm not into that stuff at all, I swear." "Jerry was my best friend." "Look, I swear, I've never done anything like that." "What made you go to a place you heard was a witches' altar?" "We were just trying to get some." "I told you." "Why did you take the book?" "Because I don't know a thing about witchcraft, and we wanted to make it sound good." "I never thought..." "You never thought what?" "That it would work." "If you didn't kill Jerry Stevens, why did you run away from us in the classroom?" "I'm scared, man." "Of us?" "Of it." "That ceremony." "I'm afraid we called up some devil or something." "One of you killed Jerry Stevens." "Who?" "He was displayed according to the rites of Azazel." "Who else would know about the ritual?" "We stopped doing this because..." "I went out there." "We were supposed to have a mass." "No one else showed, so I left." "It wasn't any of us." "Something is here-- a presence amongst us." "Angry." "I can feel it." "You're letting them go?" "There's no evidence to warrant an arrest." "They never leave evidence." "We heard how Jerry Stevens was killed-- an occult ritual." "They've reached into our area from the outside." ""They" again." "Those three kids are obviously under occult influence." "They're reaching to our children in music, television, books." "They prey on children's innocence." "The FBI recently concluded a seven-year study and found little or no evidence of the existence of occult conspiracies." "And J. Edgar Hoover never admitted to the existence of the Mafia." "Look, if the number of murders attributed to occult conspiracies were true, it would mean thousands of people killing tens of thousands of people a year, without evidence, without being exposed." "It would be the greatest criminal conspiracy in the history of civilization." "Finally, you people understand what we're up against." "Our investigation is ongoing." "Come on." "Mulder, this is mass hysteria." "And our presence here on a routine homicide only gives validity to their fears of occult murders." "The water." "What's wrong with it?" "It's going down the drain counter-clockwise." "Coriolis force in the Northern Hemisphere dictates that it should go down clockwise." "That isn't possible." "Something is here, Scully." "Something is making these things possible." "Girls." "May I have a word?" "I heard on the grapevine about what happened, and... well, I know how hard it is to talk to adults sometimes, even though you feel like you want to, well, because you're young adults." "What I'm trying to say is, if you feel like talking, I'm here to listen, okay?" " Thanks, Mrs. Paddock." " Yeah, thanks, Mrs. Paddock." "Hang in there." "Your records indicate a high incidence of students complaining of depression, headaches, eating disorders." "This is high school." "It's normal for students to display abnormal behavior." "I'm assuming you're familiar with the early indications of repressed memory." "Just because a student has a headache doesn't mean he's repressing memory." "In your counseling, you've found no evidence of any past ritual abuse?" "None." "Would it be possible for me to speak to any of the students who have had chronic complaints?" "That would be a betrayal of the doctor-patient relationship." "Sorry." "From the volume of student complaints, he was pretty quick to dismiss my concerns." "Maybe there's nothing here." "Maybe he's hiding something." "Take a look at this." "I found this on the Internet." ""The discovery yesterday" ""of a mutilated teenage boy in the forest" ""has police officials distressed about the possibility of a conspiratorial organization of dark forces."" "Where is that pulled from, local paper?" ""The Jew is known to remove organs and sacrifice teens in their religious ceremonies."" "It's taken from Volkischer Beobachter, a Nazi newspaper in 1934." "The rumors are the same, but blanks have been filled in with whoever must be feared or persecuted at the time-- in this case, it's occultists." "Modern witches, known as Wiccan, are a religion." "They have a great reverence for all life and nature." "They do not cast harmful spells, they don't worship Satan." "Even the Church of Satan has renounced murder and torture." "Their influence here wouldn't account for the frogs or the water draining backwards or, most importantly, the murder." "Well, if not witches, then what?" "For your final examination, one-half of your grade will be based on your diagram of a dissected pig embryo." "Of course, these are actually hog embryos belonging to the order of the artiodactyl or creatures with hooves." "Be sure to remove the heart and lungs and draw a diagram of each." "Be neat." "Extra credit will be given for dissecting the heart." "You have until the end of the period." "I'll cut it open if you do the heart." "Okay." "I've had this happen before." "Some kids just have trouble dissecting things." "Shannon, I'm trying to reach your father and get him to pick you up." "No!" "I'm sure he'll be here soon." "No!" " Shannon?" " Shannon, honey, come back!" "Shannon, you're remembering!" "Tell me what you're remembering." "You, um, know who my step-dad is, right?" "Jim Ausbury on the PTC." "All right, well, my mom... she's a teacher." "Well, was a teacher." "My real dad, he, um... he ran away." "And... my mom met Jim at some seminar, something." "And they, um... they got married." "My sister and I moved up here when I was about, um... four." "She was about two." "Anyway, a couple weeks ago, my class, we took a field trip to what they call the American Stonehenge." "And..." "I remember when I was four years old Jim took me in his car near there, and he, um he made me... in the back seat." "He told me that if I ever told anybody that he would hurt me." "As he touched me, you know," "I would pretend like I was out of my body-- deep in the ocean, down with the fish, in the dark water." "Somehow" " I don't know" "I managed to block out all these things, but lately, it's all been..." "I'm remembering, you know?" "The others, too." "Others?" "Yeah." "Men and women, they would, um, come to the house, you know, when my mom was away, and they would take me down to the basement." "It was really dark." "It was, like, painted red with a dirt floor." "They would wear these robes, black and red, and they would sing and they would chant, and then they would tie me and my sister up." "These men and women, they would... make us do things." "They called me a breeder." "They would get me pregnant and then they would kill the babies." "I've had three children, and they're all buried in the cellar." "One night," "Jim murdered my sister for a sacrifice." "She was only eight years old." "He told everybody that she died in an accident." "Today brought it all back." "Clear, like it happened yesterday." "Imagine if what she said is true." "Why don't we just wait and see what her parents have to say." "Where's Shannon?" "They told me you were bringing her home." "She wanted to remain with friends." "And under the circumstances, we thought it best." "Circumstances?" "Why wouldn't she want to come home?" "Someone... or something has obviously put these things into her mind." "Mrs. Ausbury, perhaps you'd like a glass of water?" "Thank you." "Mr. Ausbury?" "Mrs. Ausbury, your daughter has not accused you of any involvement in these activities." "Do you have any idea why Shannon might have said these things?" "Jim and I have been having marriage problems lately." "We're committed to working them out." "Maybe we haven't been paying enough attention to Shannon." "She and I don't we don't get along." "We fight." "Have you ever known Shannon to be pregnant?" "Of course not." "She's 15 years old!" "And how can you possibly believe such...?" "Have you ever had another child?" "A girl." "Teresa." "She died." "At eight years old?" "Eight weeks." "It was crib death." "Did you do it?" "I would kill... anyone who did the things to her that she claims." "Not a very Christian tenet." "Thou God of vengeance, shine forth." "Even the Devil can quote scripture to fit his needs." "How dare you?" "!" "Get out of our house!" "As far as I know, you put those ideas in my daughter's head." "Now get out." "The Devil travels in many forms." "And you may be one!" "Are you sure you're up to this, Shannon?" "I heard about what you said." "I'll be okay." "I don't want to miss the final." "I'll be in my office if you're feeling funny." "Maybe you ought to remove your jewelry." "You wouldn't want to lose it in some pig's guts." "I'll hold it until you're finished." "I heard the chair and a crash, and I came running out of the office." "Did you see anybody leaving the room?" "Did you hear the door open?" "I lock the doors after school when I'm alone." "I..." "I get afraid." "I feel a dark angel is amongst us." "It wants a sacrifice." "It's been years since..." "since we've done that." "Exactly." "Exactly." "We haven't kept our faith." "Are any of you... responsible for my daughter?" "We all are." "She was sacrificed for us." "It's a portent." "Shannon's death allows us to get rid of the police, the FBI." "It can all be blamed on her." "Jim... you tell them she had a thing for Jerry Stevens." "She killed him out of jealousy." "She cut out his eyes because she couldn't stand to have him look at another girl, and his heart because she was heartbroken." "But when they leave and are gone, we must rekindle our faith rather than lose it." "I never imagined she would hurt herself like that." "I'm old-fashioned, Agent Scully." "I can't bring myself to believe that children are capable of such things as they are these days." "She wanted me to hold that for her." "Excuse me." "Her office has a faint odor of incense." "She says it's to block the smell of formaldehyde." "It's also used in black mass rituals." "Well, I've got to admit, there are some oddities to her story." "What do you mean, oddities?" "Well, the man she replaced has taken two sick days in a 15-year career." "The morning of Jerry Stevens' murder," "Mr. Kingery developed necrotizing fasciitis." "Flesh-eating bacteria?" "That's very rare." "I know." "And when I questioned the other staff members about Mrs. Paddock's background, no one can even recall hiring her." "Look, I'm even getting caught up in this." "I mean, I'm sure that Mrs. Paddock's arrival and the teacher's sickness is just a coincidence." "And the fact that no one can recall hiring her-- it's a bureaucratic oversight." "I got a feeling this is something we both should get caught up in." "I'm going to get a search warrant for the Ausbury house." "I've been told they're staying with friends." "You check deeper into Mrs. Paddock." "My religion... my family, Agent Mulder, goes back in this town seven generations." "They fled persecution from people being persecuted, all in the name of religion." "I was raised to believe" "Christianity was synonymous with hypocrisy." "Man's natural tendency was "to do what thou whilst,"" "not "do unto others."" "We believe man is nothing but an animal-- no better, no worse than those that walk on four legs." "And although I believed our faith kept us powerful in the community-- wealthy, good health" " I..." "I came to see hypocrisy in the others." "In me." "When they told me to blame my dead daughter for Jerry Stevens' death, my reaction..." "I was sick that they would vilify an innocent someone I loved just to protect themselves." "And, at that moment, I knew I am better than an animal, that my... previous beliefs were responsible for her no longer being with us and that it was time to talk to you." "Clean." "Did you abuse Shannon?" "Never sexually." "In the rituals." "The blood of the young is considered very powerful." "We'd include them in the ceremonies, against their will." "They were too young to be trusted not to talk, but we never physically hurt them." "We'd slip over the ancient rituals that we didn't want to do." "Like drinking grape juice instead of wine at communion?" "What about Shannon's memories?" "We'd perform a sort of posthypnotic suggestion that repressed their memories." "When they came of age-- 18, 21-- then they were made aware of the religion and brought into its practice." "When she recalled the past events, she must have mixed up reality with... with that crap that's on Geraldo and the tabloids." "Did the others kill Jerry Stevens?" "Shannon?" "No." "But you are responsible." "You knew the possibilities contained in your beliefs, no matter how watered down." "Did you really think you could call up the Devil and ask him to behave?" "Who are the others?" "Yeah?" "Mulder, the school." "I'm in trouble." "Scully?" "I've got an emergency." "I'm placing you under arrest." "I'll be back for you later." " Scully?" "!" " Mulder, what's wrong?" "You called me;" "you said you were in trouble." "No, I didn't touch the phone." "Ausbury confessed to conspiracy." "He's going to give up the names of everybody involved-- parents, teachers." "I checked on Mrs. Paddock's background." "I don't think she's involved." "My God." "You think that's some kind of acid?" "There's no evidence of any reaction with the wood from the acid." "There are tracks in the dirt, like from a snake." "That's impossible." "It would take a large python hours to consume and weeks to digest a human being." "You really do watch The Learning Channel." "Scully." "Snakeskin." "There's a python in Paddock's room." "Sheriff Oakes called me." "Jim Ausbury is dead." "He was talking to the FBI." "Did they kill him?" "You know who killed him." "Ausbury was no believer." "He had no real faith, no devotion." "He was punished for his doubts." "We have to act or the same will happen to us, if it's not already too late." "We have to assume Jim told them who we are." "If Mulder knows, it will make the offering all the more meaningful." "They're here." "Lock the office." "My keys." "They were in my pocket." "Mulder." "Mrs. Paddock?" "What happened?" "I-I came back." "They were taking the snake." "They" " Mrs. Brown, Mr. Vitaris-- there are things about them I learned." "I must tell you, I think they killed that boy." "We know about that." "Conference room." "It's all there." "Paramedics must be tied up by the storm." "You just stay there, Mrs. Paddock." "We're going to lock the door." "Stay still." "We'll be back." "It'll make the blood easier to clean up." "Dominus inferus vobiscum." "Et cum tuo." "You're right." "It is already too late." "Oh, God." "Mulder, did you see his expression?" "It was as if something else had control of him." "Paddock." "Mrs. Paddock?" "Mulder." "I made this!"