Link for Spookys and for those missing parts: This story can be found in its entirety at: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Dreamworld/2528/mgtitle.html

Archive: freely

Category: X, R, A, H

Rating: mostly R (sexual situations, mature language, and implied violence), but there are a couple of NC-17 sections.

Spoilers: Brief episode references late in the story; no major spoilers. This is a stand-alone, with the typical stand-alone disregard for the mytharc.

Keywords: MSR

Disclaimer: The characters and situations of the television program "The X Files" are the creations and property of Chris Carter, Fox Broadcasting, and Ten-Thirteen Productions, and have been used without permission. No copyright infringement is intended.

Summary: What's *your* evil spirit?

THANKS appear at the end. If you don't read any other part of this story, we hope you'll read those.

----

There was a little wart-covered demon in Mr. Kopeck's desk. He couldn't tell people about it because they would think he was crazy, but if he opened the file drawer and peeked inside, he could see two yellow, malevolent eyes glowing at him from the dark interior. The worst part was, in a few minutes Mrs. Chernoff was supposed to take over his seventh period class, so he could talk to Principal Waters about that unfortunate incident last week.

Mr. Kopeck didn't know what to do. Should he warn Mrs. Chernoff about the thing in his desk? Should he keep the information to himself, and just take the chance that she wouldn't open the drawer? Maybe, he thought, he should simply pretend he didn't know anything about the creature, even if she did find it. Really, was it his fault that the thing was living in his desk?

At the back of the classroom, Brittany Woodall raised her hand.

"Yes?" said Mr. Kopeck, dragging his attention back to his students.

Brittany -- she really was a hot number, Mr. Kopeck thought -- brushed eraser crumbs off the front of her sweater. "Can I go now?"

His brows drew together in confusion. "What do you mean?"

She sighed impatiently. "My mother wrote you a note, Mr. Kopeck. I have a dentist appointment. I'm supposed to be excused at 2:15."

Mr. Kopeck nodded. "Oh -- that's right. Of course, Brittany. Just be sure to take your textbook home with you. The homework assignment tonight is the chapter review on page 82."

A collective groan went up from the class.

Mr. Kopeck ignored it. He watched Brittany sweep her books and folders off her desk and gather them to her chest. She was wearing that sweater he liked again, that tight one with the blue stripes. When he'd been in high school, he thought, he would have killed for a date with a cheerleader like Brittany Woodall.

A rustling sound from his desk drawer brought his thoughts back to the ugly little demon, and Mrs. Chernoff. He opened the drawer a crack and peered at the sharp teeth that glinted at him from the darkness.

Screw it, Mr. Kopeck thought. He had never liked Mrs. Chernoff that much anyway.

****

"This is where she was found," said Principal Waters, looking down at the floor with a troubled expression. "Right here in front of the blackboard. They took the body this morning, but otherwise nothing's been touched."

Scully knelt down. With gloved fingers, she examined the bloodstain.

"I don't know how something like this could have happened in my school," the principal said, wringing his hands. "Nothing ever happens around here."

Since the school sat across from a postcard-perfect New England common in a village with more quaintness than people, Scully found nothing incongruous in the claim. "I just came from examining the body," she told the hovering principal. "The victim died from massive head trauma. Judging from the shape of the wound, I'd say she hit her head on the metal eraser tray."

"She must have hit it with a lot of force," Mulder said behind her. She heard the edge in his voice, and wondered whether it was meant to convey mere doubt about her medical opinion, or lingering resentment over whatever had been bothering him all day. "The last time I saw a head wound like that, the victim had been hit with an axe."

Principal Waters whimpered.

Still on her knees, Scully looked at the classroom around her. The air smelled like chalk dust, musty books, and pencil shavings. It had been a while since she'd been in a setting like this, but the feeling was familiar, and agreeable. A person didn't forget two decades of being a teacher's pet overnight.

She gestured to the overturned office chair lying a few feet from the bloodstain, then to the line of partially-erased writing high on the blackboard. "It looks to me like she was standing on that chair so she could reach the top of the board, and the chair went out from under her. She was just unlucky enough to hit her head on the tray as she fell."

"What about the bite marks you saw on the body?" said Mulder, looking over Scully's shoulder at the pool of blood.

"Rats."

"Rats?"

"Rats," said Scully emphatically.

Principal Waters paled. "Oh, dear. I didn't know we had rats -- except in the cafeteria, of course."

Scully got to her feet, and drew off her latex gloves with a snap. Mulder was fooling himself, she thought, if he suspected an X-File here. It was sheer coincidence that another teacher from this same school had died in the last week. Full-figured women in pumps were simply not meant to go standing on chairs, especially not chairs with casters.

Of course, she couldn't tell him that outright, not after the way he'd been behaving all day. She'd never realized Mulder could be so touchy.

"This isn't even poor Mrs. Chernoff's classroom," said Principal Waters behind her, still peering anxiously at the red stain. "It's Larry Kopeck's. She was only here because he had a meeting with me."

Mulder took a step backwards to look up at the writing on the blackboard. "'Venio, venis, venit,'" he read. "'I come, you come, he comes.'"

"Some kind of grammar exercise?" Scully said.

"Either that, or the play-by-play for a Roman orgy."

"It's the present indicative conjugation of the verb 'venire,'" said a voice from the doorway.

All three of them -- Scully, Mulder, and Principal Waters -- wheeled around.

Scully was surprised by the man attached to the voice. He was a little over six foot, she estimated, an inch or two taller than Mulder, with broad shoulders and long legs, the kind of physique one expected to find on a second-string high school quarterback or a weekend warrior who took his games seriously. The pale patches on his nose suggested it had met a curveball or the sharp end of a hockey skate once or twice but had been carefully patched up afterward, and the faint, neat, but visible scar on the underside of his square jaw was clearly the result of stitches. His neatly if unimaginatively cut black hair was just beginning to recede, and Scully knew he was the sort of man who'd go a distinguished salt-and-pepper at the temples first. All in all, she thought, not a bad looking man. The only thing that didn't seem to go with the rest of the package was the air of uncertainty he projected.

Principal Waters stiffened. "Mr. Kopeck," he said, with the sort of dry disapproval one usually reserves for shoplifters and people who drive without car insurance.

Mr. Kopeck smiled disarmingly, and shrugged.

"You teach Latin?" Mulder asked.

Mr. Kopeck shook his head. "I teach World History. We've been doing a unit on the Roman Empire, and I just wrote that on the board as an example of the language. I had some better-known phrases up there, too, but it looks like they've been erased."

"Still, you do read and write Latin?"

"Yes," said Mr. Kopeck. "Not that there's much call for it these days."

Scully wondered what Mulder was getting at, and why he was even bothering. If the victim had been wearing a cardboard sign that read "I lost my balance and hit my head," the facts could not have been more obvious.

She decided she ought to assert herself a little, at least in a tactful way. She took out her badge and showed it to Mr. Kopeck. "I'm Agent Scully, and this is my partner, Agent Mulder," she said. "Is there anything you can tell us about Mrs. Chernoff's accident?"

"It was definitely an accident, then?" said Mr. Kopeck, with a note of hope.

"Yes," said Scully.

Mulder glanced back at the Latin on the chalkboard. "We can't be sure."

Mulder had many sterling qualities, Scully thought. He was smart and dedicated and he knew a thing or two about erogenous zones. At the moment, however, she wanted to smack him.

Beside them, Principal Waters cleared his throat. "Mr. Kopeck was with me yesterday afternoon when the unfortunate incident occurred," he told them. "I doubt he can shed any more light on the matter than I can."

"You can come in, Mr. Kopeck," said Scully, since the teacher was still standing in the doorway. "The forensics team released the scene this morning, when the body was removed. We're just verifying a few things for ourselves."

Mr. Kopeck looked even more uncertain. "Actually, I was hoping I wouldn't have to see the, uh -- to see where Mrs. Chernoff was found. I just came to collect my gym bag, if that's possible, and those two books on the corner of my desk."

"You didn't need those things yesterday?" Mulder asked, his tone so sharply suspicious that Scully felt a surge of impatience.

Mr. Kopeck shook his head. "No. I didn't know there'd be any reason to move my classes to the auditorium, and I only work out on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. After my meeting with Principal Waters, I went straight home."

"The scene's been released," Scully repeated. "You can take anything that's yours."

Mr. Kopeck remained in the doorway. "Could you possibly... you know, pass the things out to me? I just need those two old books, and the gym bag under my desk."

Scully resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She knew there was no shortage of squeamish people in the world, but she found it hard to understand what was so intimidating about a dried bloodstain.

She collected Mr. Kopeck's belongings, then walked them over to him, feeling slightly ridiculous. As she handed the teacher his things, she was surprised to see that he was sweating.

"Thanks," he said, and disappeared quickly back into the hallway.

Mulder was already giving Principal Waters the old "Thanks, be sure to contact us if you remember anything that might be of importance" speech as she rejoined them. They all shook hands, and Principal Waters made his exit.

Scully crossed her arms over her chest, waiting for Mulder to admit that he had brought her on a wasted trip.

Instead he crossed his arms over his chest, too, and leveled a challenging look at her. "You're sure this was an accident, Scully?"

"Positive."

"In that case, I have just one question for you."

She sighed. This conversation was fifty percent professional, she sensed, and fifty percent whatever it was that had put him in this mood. "And that would be...?"

"If Mrs. Chernoff was standing on the chair and erasing the chalkboard when she fell and hit her head, where's the eraser?"

Scully looked around her at the bare floor.

Finally she said, "I see what you mean."

"The chief detective on the scene assured me that nothing had been tampered with, and Principal Waters told us the same thing. So what happened to the eraser?"

"Couldn't the janitor have moved it when he found the body?"

Mulder shook his head. "He said he didn't touch anything, just ran out of the room in a panic."

Scully frowned. "So maybe she got up on the chair, and then realized she'd forgotten the eraser."

"She must have had it at some point. Mr. Kopeck said someone had erased his Latin phrases. Why would she put it away, halfway through erasing the board? Someone else was here, Scully. Someone tidied up."

Mulder was regarding her with an air of what looked very much like smugness. He wanted to prove her wrong, she thought. This wasn't just about the case. This was about settling some mysterious score.

Scully's gaze drifted to Mr. Kopeck's desk. Dusting powder on the drawer pulls told her that the forensics team had already collected prints. If she looked through the desk, would she find the eraser neatly put away?

She reached down to open the bottom drawer.

****

He was just going to leave town, Mr. Kopeck told himself as he tossed his books and his gym bag in the front seat of his car and jumped in. He was going to go home, throw a few things in a suitcase, and then hit the road and never look back. There was nothing in this town to hold him here any more anyway.

He had never dreamed that the demon in his desk would kill Mrs. Chernoff. Scare her a little, maybe; but Mrs. Chernoff had deserved a little scaring. She'd been a thorn in Mr. Kopeck's side for a couple of years now, ever since he'd opposed her campaign for a stricter student dress code. Mr. Kopeck had never understood why teenage girls in belly shirts were supposed to be the ultimate peril to Western Civilization, and he'd told Mrs. Chernoff so. Since then she'd had it in for him, the meddling old busybody...

He caught himself. Jesus, that was a fine way to refer to the dead. Poor Mrs. Chernoff was never going to meddle in anything again, and it was all his fault.

He'd been horrified when he'd heard about her accident. Of course, that was only the second shock to his system in a week. The first had come when the incantation in that dusty old book of his father's had actually worked. He'd almost peed himself, then. He still might pee himself.

Now there was a death on his head. Maybe two deaths -- he still wasn't sure about Mrs. Stiller, the guidance counselor. Supposedly she'd killed herself, but who could say for sure? They'd found her dead in her office on Tuesday, with an empty bottle of Valium in her hand. She'd called a friend that same day, though, sobbing and saying that she was going insane. She'd called her priest, too, leaving a message on his answering machine asking about exorcism. What if she'd seen the demon in his desk drawer? He'd talked himself out of feeling responsible, but now he was starting to have doubts again.

Damn it, how had he gotten himself into this mess? The whole thing had seemed ridiculous, a chant for calling an evil spirit from the underworld. Just a big joke. He didn't even believe in an underworld, for God's sake -- how was he supposed to know he could actually summon a demon?

Well, he was getting out of here. Let someone else find the horrible thing; he was washing his hands of it. He was going to head somewhere sunnier and more modern than this oppressive little town, Phoenix or Miami or L.A., someplace where pretty women wore bathing suits nine months of the year. He was going to start a new life. From this day forward, he wasn't going to be the loser for whom everyone in town felt sorry. Instead he was going to be the most careful, most capable, most self-assured man in the world.

Yes, that's what he was going to do. His life had gotten completely out of control, and the only thing to do was start fresh.

Halfway to the health club, Mr. Kopeck discovered that the demon was in his gym bag.

End 1/10