Chapter Text
“Scully, you’re gonna loooove this one.” Mulder’s eyes practically glittered with excitement.
Scully’s eyes rolled to the pencil pocked ceiling. “Hit me.”
“43-year-old, white male. Found this morning. Headless and completely nude. Aside from no head, and clothes, there are no stab wounds, bullet holes or ligature marks to indicate why he’s on the floor. And no blood, anywhere. Said body is currently STUCK, adhered, attached, to the floor in a brownstone in Greenwich Village. And the icing on the cake; the body is still alive.” Mulder moved to the slide projector and flipped off the lights.
“Without a head.”
“Yep. Nothing touching the body but the floor and they can’t separate the two. They went to the basement, nothing underneath. No life support of any kind. But he’s breathing and his heart’s beating.”
The first slide lit the room.
Dark wood paneled room, bookcases, books, bamboo matting on the floor. A tall, pale, thin, naked, lightly muscled male body lay as if on a slab in the middle of the room.
Next slide, opposite direction, but crouched down to get a good look at the neck. The neck looked as if it had just been sliced in one clean cut, with no signs of whatever had done it. All the normal veins, arteries, bone, and tissues were in place. Nothing was leaking. There was no blood on the matting on the floor. Scared looking cops with coffee stood in the background.
“Now I said, no new marks on him, but he is covered in scars. Old scars, tons of those, especially on the hands. Looks like he went a few rounds with a mirror a few years back. New York PD ran his prints,”
Third slide, a medical ID page “Doctor Stephen Strange, a former neurosurgeon, and a damn good one apparently. Had a horrific car accident about four years ago,” slide of a demolished Lamborghini hanging, nose down into the East River, “shattered both hands, massive nerve and tendon damage, underwent seven surgeries.” Slide of a unconscious and heavily bruised, dark haired man in a hospital bed with both hands elevated and skewered with with a truly amazing number of flexors. “He’ll never hold a scalpel again.” Mulder handed a folder to Scully.
She opened it and read the details of the wreck by the light of the slide. ‘Seatbelt and ridiculously expensive car saved his life, but couldn’t keep his hands from being smashed between the wheel and the dash of the car. Saved his handsome face though’, she thought absently. Unconsciously, Scully closed one of her hands into a fist. ‘Imagine’, she thought, ‘to be at the height of your career and then suddenly told you’ll never work again’.
She skimmed the details of the seven surgeries. Very expensive and state of the art techniques. Some that hadn’t even been approved by the AMA yet. Scully vaguely remembered this guy was into bleeding edge technology, finding new ways to graft nerves that couldn’t be grafted, removing brain tumors that couldn’t be removed, spine repair that actually sometimes worked. This guy was the Hail Mary pass for brain and spine procedures on the East Coast. If you had the money, that is. Or was, she corrected herself. This guy probably could have fixed himself, if there were two of him and he hadn’t spent four hours hanging like a side of beef with his hands immersed in filthy water.
“He took off to Tibet after the last surgery. Lost everything. His apartment, cars, everything taken by creditors. Not a penny to his name. Shows back up a year later and takes up residence at 177A Bleecker Street. House is signed over to his name. House itself has been reputed to be “spook central” for as long as it’s existed. Whole selection of weird people owning it and odd occurrences happening around it over the decades. Our boy Stephen is fitting in nicely. He has a reputation for weirdness and funky robes and capes. Odd people coming and going all hours. House gets damaged regularly, is repaired by the next day. YOU try to find a plumber in New York that’ll turn up in 24 hours.”
“Money talks, Mulder.”
“No known employment. Has some odd connection with the Avengers, but nothing they want to talk about. Probably the ONLY reason Skinner’s letting us go.” Mulder switched to a slide of the outside of the elegant building. “Cops in the area are terrified of the place. Seems everybody’s got a spooky story to tell about a succession of ‘Wizards of Bleecker Street’. The area’s practically crime free though. NYPD got an anonymous call this morning and found the front door open. They did a full search of the house and found nothing. All sorts of swords and axes and weapons on the walls, none of them touched.”
“So they called and asked for you...”
“Well..”
Scully sighed, “when do we leave?”
As soon as you can get a ‘to go’ kit together. The cops don’t even want to touch the body.”
“I’ll be ready in fifteen minutes.”
They pulled their rental car around to the ally behind the brownstone. There was no graffiti. No strewn trash. The place was spotlessly clean. An odd sort of courtyard with a closed single horse stable was contained by a low brick wall that backed the building.
“A little weird for New York, wouldn’t you say?” Mulder pocketed the car keys and led the way around to the front.
A uniformed and obviously nervous police officer watched the front doors.
Mulder and Scully showed their badges and were ushered in.
The doors closed behind them with a dull boom. Directly ahead and up a giant three story stairway high above them, was a huge round window made of many hundreds of pieces of glass and designed around a series of arches making a rounded device. An odd sort of oriental grate and sitting room at the top of the stairs separated the window from looking directly down the staircase. However, tiny rainbows chased shadows as the sun shown through it and motes of dust danced. Most of the lights were out and the huge whole place had an eerie, absent feel.
“Body’s this way,” Mulder led Scully to the right of the stairway.
They entered a forty by forty study lined with old leather-bound books. There was a fireplace in one wall and large leather chairs flanking it. The lighting was discrete and expensive. A small oriental end table at the side of one of the chairs held a real Tiffany lamp. The body looked like a wax dummy on the floor, but for the gentle movement of the chest.
Scully pulled on a pair of rubber gloves, sat down her doctors bag and pulled out a stethoscope.
Mulder looked at the books lining the wall for a minute. “I’m gonna look around, you OK here? Need anything?”
“Oh, you’ll hear me if there’s trouble.” Scully said, not looking up. She put the stethoscope against the man’s chest. “Heart’s strong and steady.”
Shaking his head, Mulder left the room. Directly across from the small study was a huge library. Down the hall, a writing and scroll room. ‘Who keeps scrolls these days?.’ He wondered. To the left of the stairs he found a formal sitting and dining room, then another room containing a smaller, homier table next to a very clean and large modern kitchen. He opened the refrigerator. ‘Vegetarian,’ noted Mulder to himself, pushing the contents around and looking in the trays. He opened the freezer. ‘Likes ice cream, though.’ He shifted a few of the containers around and found nothing out of the ordinary there either. ‘Ben and Jerry’s Hulk a Hulka Burning Fudge.’ He noted, and closed the freezer. Next he rifled the cabinets. Normal, normal, normal, boring.
Grabbing up a tea towel from a rack, he headed back to Scully.
He gently knocked on the door frame as he entered as to not startle Scully. She was drawing blood from an arm and didn’t look up.
Mulder casually covered the Doctor’s privates with the tea towel.
Scully did look up at that.
“No man wants his junk on display.” Mulder said. “I’m gonna go upstairs and have a look around. I was told the good Doctor has quite an occult collection. Wasn’t anything unusual in the fridge. Looks like he’s a vegetarian with a weakness for ice cream. The food’s all fresh.”
“I’m almost finished here. Blood looks normal. He has normal reflexes and responses to stimuli, if a bit sluggish. All in all, he’s pretty healthy for a headless guy.” She sighed and got up, labeling vials as she did so. “I’ll sit here a little while and let you look around and then I’ll go run these down to the New York lab.”
Mulder nodded and headed out again.
He walked slowly up the gigantic staircase and stopped at the second floor. Mulder took the right corridor first. The first room he opened was obviously a master bedroom done in various shades of dark blue and green. A queen sized bed, bed tables with Tiffany lamps, clothes cabinet, more filled bookshelves, large closet, a writing desk, full bath and shower. A faint whiff of a man’s cologne and aftershave. Various bottles and two expensive watches in cases on a mirrored dresser. Several awards for medical procedures. Next to the master were two generic guest bedrooms and across from them were four more.
Mulder walked over to the left side. Again, the first bedroom was a master, but this one was in shades of red and orange and had more of a Chinese feel and smell to it. Japanese brush paintings were framed on the wall. Six more generic bedrooms led Mulder to think that this guy was used to large group shindigs. He went back to the staircase, walked up to the third floor, around the room divider, and right up to the giant window where he whistled at the view. Then the things on the walls caught his attention.
The walls were covered with what must have been priceless weapons, armor and some very impressive restraints that would hold a person solidly in almost any position. ‘Kinky’ thought Mulder, moving away to look at a cutlass with an emerald the size of a hen’s egg for a pommel. There were swords of every description. From fencing foils to giant two handed bastard swords. Axes, single and double headed. Maces, morningstars, nun-chucks, throwing stars. ‘Better than the armory at the Tower of London’, Mulder thought.
The floor plan of the third story was mostly openspace, with shorter corridors once again heading off to the right and left. Two small meditation chambers flanked the giant window. The floorspace between the corridors was filled with giant glass cases, the type most often used by art galleries or museums to display priceless treasures.
“You are kidding me!” Mulder said in shock and wonder as he stopped at one case labeled ‘The New Jersey Devil’. The glass-eyed, horse-like head stared back out at him. It stood about six feet tall upright on two horses hooves. A pair of fairly large bat wings were folded at its back and the two tiny forlegs had small furred hands. The whole thing was covered in black horse hair. Mulder examined it as closely as he could through the glass. If this was a Barnum Hokum it was one of the best he had ever seen. He looked around for a light switch and spotted a multi switch on a far wall.
Behind him a flicker of red swept into a darker pool of darkness.
Mulder turned on a few of the spotlights over the cases.
He walked up to the one closest to the switches. “Dragon’s Claws, Scales, Teeth and Gizzard Stones” he read. The claws were huge, six foot tall, shining ebony black, curving gently to fill the case, four to a side. In the center, a glass shelf held the major canines, upper and lower, old ivory curving some three feet long arranged around a half dozen perfectly spherical blood red pieces of what looked like tiger’s eye. The bottom glass shelf held four rather ratty looking curved plates of something that retained a faint green metallic glitter. ‘Doc must have spent a ton of money on these humbugs. Wonder if he has a Fiji Mermaid up here too...’.
He saw a reflection of a vaguely rectangular red piece of cloth moving and spun round.
There was nothing. He chalked it up to nerves and ambled over to the next case, his gaze sweeping the room for movement.
In the next case, a frame held an oriental patterned silk cloak. It was well worn and carefully patched in places. Beside it in the case rested an impressive and obviously heavily used fighting staff bound with iron and caped with silver. “The Cloak and Staff of Master Lin” Mulder looked around. There were probably a half dozen cloaks and staffs enshrined.
The next case held a huge book in a spiked iron cage and bound in spiked iron chains.
“The Necronomicon”. Mulder made a disparaging sound. “Sure, it is. And bound in human skin I hear.”
This time he heard a distinct flap before he spun around. “Is there someone up here?” He demanded in a loud voice, “this is Fox Mulder of the FBI!”
The flapping continued. Mulder pulled his weapon. “I’m armed. And authorized to use deadly force!”
A distinctly red something flew past the Jersey Devil and around the room divider.
“Freeze!” Mulder yelled, running around his end of the room divider, to the top of the stairs.
The red cape froze in mid air and settled into a human-like form, as if someone were wearing it.
“Mulder! Are you OK?” Scully’s muffled voice came from downstairs.
“Some really weird-ass stuff up here Scully!” Mulder advanced on the cape. He circled it.
It was empty. What was holding it up? He looked up—
The cape slapped the gun out of his hand and shot straight into his face. Before he could shout, it muffled his head and lifted him off the ground.
Scully came out to the foot of the stairs and looked up in amazement.
And the cloak fell.
As it came tumbling down the stairs, it struck every forth one. Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!
Scully could see Mulder’s muffled outline inside it. Not knowing what else to do, she pulled her weapon.
As they tumbled, Mulder’s face was freed for a moment. “SCULLY!” He howled. And went under again.
The cloak smacked Mulder against the stairs twice more before throwing him precisely at Scully’s feet and then arrowed off to the study containing the body.
“What the fuck?!?” Scully shouted.
“Follow that damn cape!” Mulder yelled. His nose was bloody, his hair stood on end, and the back of his jacket was torn. He looked like he’d been in an industrial drier. It took him two tries to get up, but he was running when he finally got his feet under him.
They ran to the study.
The cloak completely cocooned the body leaving only the neck clear.
“What the fuck?” Scully said again, slightly softer, “you were six feet in the air before you tumbled down those stairs! You should be dead!”
“It didn’t want to kill me.”
“It? Mulder, you’re crazy!”
“No, it could have suffocated me or smashed my brains out.” He took out a handkerchief and tried to stanch the flow of blood from his nose. “You saw that fall. I should be cat food. It didn’t even break my nose.”
He stumbled over to the cocooned wizard.
The cloak spat the dish towel into his face.
“Now that was uncalled for.” Mulder knelt and tried to pull a corner free.
The cloak slapped his face.
Scully fell to her knees beside him.
“Good thing you got your blood samples before this thing got here.” Mulder laughed.
“What happened, Mulder?”
Mulder got up and flopped into one of the leather armchairs. “Nothing upstairs but empty bedrooms, a bunch of P.T. Barnum Hoakum in cases and that—“. He indicated the cloak.
Amazingly, the cloak flipped him off.
Mulder laughed again. “It was apparently following me once I got up to the third floor. I challenged it, it grabbed my head, pulled me off the ground and took me down the stairs. Every hit was cushioned by the thing. Seriously, I could have bashed my brains out on a fall like that.”
Sitting down on the floor next to the body, Scully looked up at him. “What do you want to do?”
“I want you to take those blood samples in,” he pulled the keys out of his pocket and tossed them to her.
“I’m gonna stay here and see what the hell else happens. This is better than Disneyland!”
Scully got up and picked up her bag. “Want me to bring food back?”
“Pizza! Pizza! Pizza! Pizza! New York gotta have!”
“Ice tea?”
“Of course.”
Scully sighed and left a still grinning Mulder.