He closed the main door silently behind him. He had to find the demon and get it under control before it struck again. Visions of Eric Noonan's bloodied corpse swam in his brain. Mr. Happy, he thought grimly, would never be happy again.

He tiptoed across the lobby without signing in. He felt like a cat burglar, stealing into the gym unseen. To boost his morale, he began singing the theme from Mission Impossible in his head: BUM buh bum-bum, BUM buh bum-bum...

Yeah, he was cool, he was Tom Cruise, he told himself; he was Guilio in Topkapi, he was Steve McQueen, he was Pierce Brosnan in that Thomas Crown movie. He should be dressed completely in black and holding a Mag-Lite clenched between his teeth. He rounded the corner just past the racquetball court...

...and bumped right into Belinda Patteson.

"Hi, Larry," she said. "Did you forget something?"

Oh damn, oh damn, he thought, and said the first thing that popped into his head. "I was driving by and I -- I really had to use the bathroom."

So much for Steve McQueen. Belinda looked like she wanted to laugh, though whether it was because of his red face or his imaginary predicament, he couldn't be sure. "Well, okay."

"I didn't sign in," he said. "Under the circumstances."

"Okay, Larry." She gave him a polite smile.

Fortunately, he realized with relief, she didn't appear to know the old saw about the criminal and the scene of the crime, and had not yet pegged him as the Terrible Instrument of Eric Noonan's Death. "Thanks," he said, and started back down the hall.

"Just keep an eye out, okay?" she called after him. "There's some kind of animal loose in here."

He halted in his tracks. "An animal?"

"Yes, two of my cheerleaders saw something in the Womens' locker room."

He felt the blood drain from his face.

She must have noticed his pale complexion and staring eyes because she hastened to explain, "Don't worry, it might just be a squirrel or a woodchuck or something. It disappeared when they screamed."

"Oh." His voice came out sounding tight and unnatural.

"Just in case it has something to do with Eric's death, though, I called those FBI agents. Probably a little caution wouldn't hurt until they arrive."

"Thanks," he croaked, and started back down the hall, his thoughts racing.

Someone else had seen the demon. Two cheerleaders. My God, the thing must have been within striking distance of them. They could have been killed. It was a miracle, he thought frantically, that they hadn't been.

Two cheerleaders -- almost certainly, in a village this size, his own students. The other deaths had been bad enough, but if the demon slaughtered two of his own students...

He shuddered.

Time was running out. He had to stop the awful creature before it killed again. But how? He didn't even know where it was. Not only that, but Agents Mulder and Scully were headed here to the gym. He couldn't let them see him here now, not when they were already so suspicious.

There was only one thing for him to do, he realized.

He had to find a way to lure the demon to him.

****

"What do you think?" Mulder asked as they left the gym after interviewing Kandee and Brittany, and headed across the parking lot.

"I think I'm sick of this car," she answered, climbing in as Mulder held the door for her. "Next time, let's ask for a color other that red."

"Everyone's a comedian," Mulder answered good-naturedly, climbing in behind the wheel and fastening his seat belt.

"About their statements, you mean?"

Mulder nodded.

Scully pushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear and sighed. What did she think? She thought, maybe, she wanted to go home. "Frankly, Mulder, I don't know what to think."

"I do," he answered, swinging the Taurus out onto the road.

"Belinda Patteson seemed to think it was a squirrel," she offered weakly. "She says they occasionally get in through the vents."

"A Latin-speaking squirrel? A hairy, fang-toothed, yellow-eyed Latin-speaking squirrel?"

She had to admit that was unlikely. Kandee and Brittany's stories were just the same enough, and just different enough, to sound legitimate, no matter how insane. She turned to Mulder, who was clearly trying to keep a smug little smile off his handsome face. "Quit gloating."

"Moi?" Mulder answered, all innocence.

"Yes, you." She sighed. "So, what do we do now?"

"We find Mr. Kopeck and we get him to undo whatever the hell he did."

"Oh."

"For what it's worth, Scully," he said, turning to her, "I don't think this was intentional. I don't think Mr. Kopeck tried to summon a demon deliberately. I don't think he wanted anyone to die. I think...I think things just got out of hand. My guess is that he's probably trying to call it back right now. He'll probably try doing that in the same place where he originally summoned it. Since the first murders were at the high school, that's the best place to start looking, if my demon lore serves me."

She chuckled. "You've got demon lore?"

"I've got demon lore." He winked.

She nodded and watched the fences roll by, tinged pink now by the setting sun. She knew those posts were white, bright white, solid, unadorned white, but in this light...

Weird Magnet, he'd said. Ground Zero for the strange. What did that make her? What did that make them?

"Mulder," she said after another mile of silence. "I don't believe in demons."

His head bobbed slightly. "I know."

"No, Mulder." She sat up straighter. How could she explain to him what she couldn't explain to herself? "I do not believe in corporal, flesh-and whatever-passes-for-blood-in-demons, demons. I can't. I don't."

"And I don't believe in income tax," he shrugged. "But they keep sending me these 1040s."

She bit her lip. "I'm serious."

"I know you don't." He reached across unexpectedly and took her hand. "That's okay. I'll believe for both of us."

She nodded, unsure how to answer that. "What you said before Mulder, about me going away...?"

"There's Kopeck's car," Mulder said, pulling into the high school parking lot. "We've got to hurry."

****

It was his late father's fault, indirectly, that he had ever summoned the demon, thought Mr. Kopeck. Last week he'd been in his classroom leafing through one of his father's old Latin books, looking for something interesting to include in his lesson plan on Ancient Rome, when he'd seen the incantation. He'd never thought it would actually work; he'd just assumed it was the Latin equivalent of a party trick. After all, how many fathers collected books that could actually raise evil spirits?

But if it was because of his father that the demon was loose now, it was also because of his father that he had the means to get rid of it, or at least to try. Among the accumulated paraphernalia his father had left him were a Latin copy of the rites of exorcism, oil that had been blessed by a priest, and several vials of holy water.

Mr. Kopeck struck a match and lit the candles on his desk. He'd decided that the best place from which to banish the demon was the same place from which he'd summoned it, his classroom. He hoped to call the demon to him here again. His hand was shaking a little, he noticed before blowing out the match. Well, it wasn't every day that he had a showdown with a demon.

He opened the book on the desk in front of him, and took a deep breath. "Adjure te, spiritus nequissime," he began reading in a deep, solemn voice, "per Deum omnipotentem..."

He went on, intoning the words. The candles flickered on his desk, lending an eerie orange glow to what was usually the most commonplace of locations, his perfectly mundane eleventh-grade classroom. Wisps of smoke rose overhead in ghostly tendrils.

"Hearken, therefore, and tremble in fear, Satan, you enemy of the faith, you foe of the human race, you begetter of death, you robber of life, you corrupter of justice, you root of all evil and vice," he read in Latin. He reached out and turned the page.

Just then he heard something stir in the back of the room. A chill passed over him.

"Seducer of men, betrayer of the nations, instigator of envy, font of avarice, fomenter of discord, author of pain and sorrow," he continued doggedly.

"Euge, certo me exasperas," rumbled the demon -- All right, you're really pissing me off.

Mr. Kopeck kept reading. "Depart, then, transgressor. Depart, seducer, full of lies and cunning, foe of virtue, persecutor of the innocent," he chanted in Latin. "Give place, abominable creature, give way, you monster, give way."

"Extra saccum nunc sum, mentula," said the demon, creeping closer -- I'm out of the bag now, dickhead. There was menace in its tone.

Mr. Kopeck's hand closed around the vial of holy water in his pocket. It would protect him, he hoped, in case the demon tried to attack. "To what purpose do you insolently resist? To what purpose do you brazenly refuse?" he read in Latin. His voice did not falter.

"Tuam vitam miserrimam finiam!" snarled the demon -- I will put an end to thy most miserable existence.

What Mr. Kopeck lacked in bravery, he struggled to make up for in determination. "For you are guilty before almighty God," he continued, doing his best to ignore the demon, "whose laws you have transgressed."

"Intestinam tuam peruram! Sopioni tuo pellem detraham!" spat the demon -- I will burn up thy inner organs! I will flay the skin from thy dick!

Still reading, Mr. Kopeck took the holy water out of his pocket and held it up for the demon to see, jiggling it tauntingly.

"Cule!" the demon shouted -- you butthole!

Mr. Kopeck kept going.

It was going to be a fight to the finish.

****

"Hear that sound?" said Mulder, his hand on the doorknob of Mr. Kopeck's classroom, his heart pounding in anticipation. "He's chanting something in there."

"Or reciting something," Scully said. "He's a teacher, Mulder. It could be a poem or a speech, part of a lesson he intends to teach."

Mulder ignored her. "This is it," he said with barely-contained excitement. He took a deep breath, and threw his shoulder against the door.

It burst open with an explosive bang. They tumbled through the doorway together to see --

Nothing. Just Mr. Kopeck, standing at his desk, gaping at them in astonishment.

They all stared at one another.

"Can I help you?" the teacher asked finally, after a long, awkward pause.

Mulder's shoulder hurt where he'd driven it into the door. His eyes roamed the room. "We heard you talking to someone."

"I was reading," Mr. Kopeck said. "Aloud."

Mulder approached him. "What about those candles? Why are you burning candles here in your classroom on a Saturday afternoon?"

"Just testing the dramatic effect," Mr. Kopeck said, a little uncertainly. "I find it helps me to keep the students' attention if I do something showy now and then when I'm lecturing. It's an old theatrical trick I picked up from my father."

An old theatrical trick, my ass, Mulder thought. What teacher burned candles during a high school history lecture?

The demon had to be here somewhere. Mulder paced back and forth across the front of the classroom, peering down the aisles of desks. Then he got down on all fours, and searched the floor.

"Um...would you mind telling me what you're looking for?" Mr. Kopeck asked, his eyes flickering to the open door at the back of the room.

"Just a routine check," Scully said.

She could have at least tried to sound a little more convincing, Mulder thought with a frown. He straightened up. His knees creaked as he got to his feet.

Mr. Kopeck was still wearing the slightly stunned air of a man whose door had just been unexpectedly kicked in. "This kind of thing is routine for you? Hmmmm..."

Mulder noticed the book on the teacher's desk. "Is that in Latin?"

"Yes," said Mr. Kopeck, nudging it closed. Something about the gesture reminded Mulder of a student caught passing notes in class. "It's, uh, part of the unit I'm teaching on the Roman Empire."

Mulder's eyes narrowed. "Does the phrase 'Roseas papillas vestras ostendite' mean anything to you?"

Mr. Kopeck stared at him, his face flushing scarlet. "What?"

"Two witnesses at the gym today heard a voice saying those words -- 'Roseas papillas vestras ostendite.' What does it mean?"

"It means," said Mr. Kopeck, shooting an uncomfortable glance at Scully, "'Reveal your pink tits.'"

Another awkward silence fell over the classroom.

"Well," said Scully finally, "I think we've accomplished all we're going to accomplish here."

Mulder took one look at her face and knew better than to argue.

"We're sorry to have disturbed you, Mr. Kopeck," Scully said crisply. "Come on, Mulder."

He nodded his good-bye to the history teacher, and followed her out of the classroom like a dog with its tail tucked between its legs.

"See, Mulder? Nothing paranormal here," she said, when they were back out in the hallway and she had closed the classroom door behind them.

"Scully, he was burning candles!"

"That's not against the law, Mulder."

"It's also a classic component of demonic rituals, both summoning and exorcism. And who killed Eric Noonan? You can't tell me he hit his head on an eraser tray, too."

"I never suggested he did. But there must be a better explana -- "

"Oh, hi," said Brittany Woodall, appearing around the corner in her cheerleader outfit, complete with pompoms. "Are you two here for the football game?"

"No," Scully said. "We were just on our way out, as a matter of fact."

"Yeah, I figured you were both probably too old to go for high school football," Brittany said cheerfully. She passed them, pompoms rustling. "I guess you heard about all the excitement," she remarked as she went by.

"What excitement?" Mulder asked.

"You know," Brittany said, turning back. "About the bear."

"The bear? There was a bear?"

"Two State Troopers shot a black bear, right in the gym parking lot," she said with a toss of her ponytail. "They figure that's what killed that dead guy."

Scully turned her gaze his way. He could feel her I-told-you stare boring into the side of his head.

"What about that thing you saw, Brittany?" he asked in a voice bordering on desperation. "That wasn't a bear, was it?"

Even as he asked the question, he knew it was a lost cause. Brittany struck him as the uncomplicated, upbeat type who took life as it came. If the State Police thought she'd seen a bear, then a bear it was.

Brittany laughed. "Oh, that. I guess it must have been."

"But it talked to you."

"Well, maybe, maybe not." Her nose wrinkled. "Don't, like, tell anyone else I said it did, okay? I wouldn't want them thinking I was...you know, weird or anything."

Mulder felt the last of his hopes for the case crash and burn. There was no way he was going to convince Scully to stay in Vermont another day now, not with a bona fide bear to blame for the death today. And what evidence did he have that this was an X-File, really? Nothing that couldn't be explained away as accident or coincidence.

He sighed. He was going to be hearing from Scully about this case until the end of his days. Even the sight of Brittany walking away, her short cheerleader skirt bouncing with every step she took, did nothing for his mood.

Scully cleared her throat. "Well, I guess that settles that."

He nodded glumly. "Yep, I guess so."

"So...maybe we could go back to the bed and breakfast and make the most of the evening." Her faintly suggestive smile was for Scully what answering the door dressed in Saran Wrap was for most other women. "If you're not too tired, that is."

He straightened his back. Great, so now she was starting with the Geritol cracks again. "I'm not too tired," he said stiffly.

"Good."

The worst part, he thought as they headed for the front doors of the school, was that he really did feel tired. Not only that, but his shoulder hurt from banging it against Mr. Kopeck's classroom door, and his left knee was still creaking from kneeling on the floor.

He felt tired, foolish -- and old.

**** End 08/10

Plausible Deniability & Amanda Wilde (MaybeAmanda)
Address: pdeniability@hotmail.com / maybe_a@rocketmail.com