Skin : the X-files Read Online Free PDF

plaster walls glowing in the light of the twenty-inch television set. Aside from the television, the room contained a redwood dresser that was supposed to look like an antique, a desk with a fax machine and a telephone, and a closet Mulder had filled with blue and gray suits. Mulder’s travel bag was under the desk, and his gun and badge were next to the phone, the straps of his shoulder holster trailing down behind the fax machine, swinging in the refrigerated breeze from the baseboard vents. Home on the road, 31

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    another variation on a theme. Mulder and Scully had been there a thousand times before.
    Mulder was about to get up and start packing his suits when something on the television screen caught his eye.
    He paused, momentarily forgetting the throb in his jaw.
    A reporter with frosted blond hair was speaking into a microphone as she wandered through what looked to be a hospital hallway. Behind her was a spiderweb of yellow police tape. Even through the tape, Mulder could make out the disaster scene in the room on the other side of the hallway; the torn, blood-spattered mattress, the IV
    rack sticking straight out of the wall, the destroyed, overturned television set, the shattered picture windows—
    and most disturbing of all, the strange indentation in the center of the half-open wooden door. It was the indentation that had caught his attention in the first place—because it seemed somehow familiar. Something he could almost place.
    “The sheer violence of yesterday’s tragedy has shocked local authorities,” the CNN reporter droned into her microphone, “and a boroughwide search for Professor Stanton is presently in full swing. Still, this is little comfort to the family of nurse Teri Nestor . . .” The picture on the screen changed as the reporter continued on, and Mulder found himself staring into a pair of intelligent blue eyes. The man in the enlarged photograph looked to be about fifty years old, with thinning brown hair and slightly oversized ears. Even from the cropped photo, Mulder could tell he was a 32

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    small man; the angled tips of his shoulders barely made an impression through his professorial tweed jacket, and his neck was thin and roosterlike, devoid of muscle.
    As the CNN reporter dribbled out sketchy details about the diminutive professor and the horrible murder of the young nurse, Mulder’s thoughts swept back to the moment in the barn when the Colombian swung at him with the shovel. He remembered the violent glint in the Colombian’s eyes. Then he looked again at Professor Stanton’s photo. He was still staring at Stanton’s kind blue eyes when the picture on the television changed again.
    This time he was looking at a close-up of the destroyed hospital room. The mattress, the IV rack, the broken television set, the shattered windows—and the marred, half-open door. He took a step closer to the screen, hunching forward, his eyes focused on the strangely shaped indentation in the wood. Suddenly, he realized what he was looking at.
    An imprint of a human hand, set a few inches deep into the heavy oak. Palm wide-open, fingers splayed outward. Mulder’s eyes widened, as a question struck him.
    What kind of force would it take to make an imprint of a hand in a heavy oak door?
    He turned and looked at the open door to his hotel-room closet. As the CNN report ended and the frosted blond reporter was replaced by an overweight sports-caster, Mulder crossed to the closet and placed his hand 33

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    flat against the cold wood. He gently slapped the door, keeping his fingers stiff. Then he slapped it again, this time hard enough to send shivers back into his elbow. He lifted his hand and looked at the wood. Nothing, of course.
    His mind felt suddenly alive; this was the feeling he hadn’t gotten with the mutilated cows, the driving sensa-tion that had earned him the nickname “Spooky” in the basement hallways of the Hoover Building. To anyone else, the scene held