Hell Money

Internal dating: No date given. If internal dating roughly tracks the episode order (and it doesn't always) this one, as the two previous ones, should all be in February 1996. However, there is a long gap with only one case after "Avatar," so there might be room for another case then, as February is getting rather crowded.

At a funeral home, a night watchman spots three figures near a crematorium oven. He goes to investigate and finds a man, locked in the oven, beating at the doors as he's burnt alive.

Mulder and Scully examine the body. They are told this is the third such case, but Mulder says there have been eight others in other cities, all involving recent Chinese immigrants. Mulder finds a Chinese symbol in white paint in the oven, and Detective Glen Chao is called in to read it. He says it means "ghost". Mulder also finds a corner of a bank note, which Chao says is called "Hell Money" - a symbolic offering to pay off unlucky spirits during the festival of hungry ghosts.

The dead man is identified as Johnny Lo, as recent immigrant. Scully thinks the whole thing is related to gangs, but Mulder thinks the reference to "ghosts" suggests otherwise. At Lo's apartment there is writing on the door, but Chao says he can't read it. They find that someone has been to the apartment and cleared it out. More particularly, someone has laid a new carpet, covering a recent blood stain. They also find a frog, which Chao says is a charm to bring luck.

An older Chinese man, Hsin, is looking after his daughter, Kim. She needs an operation, but he can't afford it. He makes his way to a crowded room where some sort of lottery is taking place. The prize is presumably the large box of money displayed at the front. With great solemnity, an empty vase is passed around and every man puts his personal tile into it. One of pulled out, and a man, blind in one eye, reacts with mingled fear and hope. He is then given another jar, which has lots of read tiles and one white tile. The man draws a red tile with a symbol on it, and looks grim. The men in suits who run the game lead him away.

Having found a charm in Lo's room, Mulder and Scully, relying on Chao as an interpreter, talk to the woman who runs the shop he bought it from. They show her the sign on Lo's door and she reacts with fear. Chao says she says the house is a house of ghosts. He relates it to the festival of the hungry ghosts - an annual day when the gates of hell open and the spirits of the dead roam the earth. Believers put Hell Money and food outside their doors to keep the spirits away, but some spirits are too terrible to be bought off, such as the souls of murderers, or the spirits who collect the souls of condemned men.

As Chao talks, we see the man who drew the tile. He's drinks something, then seems to see spirits watching him. One reaches out and takes his heart from his body. A doctor reaches out and checks his eyes.

A night watchman sees masked figures in a cemetery at night, around a freshly dug grave, recently prepared for a funeral the next day. Mulder and Scully come to the scene, and Mulder jumps into the grave and finds a body buried beneath the grave. It's the man who drew the tile. Scully does the autopsy and finds a lot of surgical incision all done in the last year, but no signs of any illness. She suggests he's been selling his body parts, and relates it to the death of Johnny Lo, who had a glass eye. As she cuts into the chest cavity, a frog pushes out of the body.

Back at the lottery game, this time Hsin's number comes up. He duly draws a red tile from the smaller vase and looks grim as he's led away.

Mulder and Scully take the frog to Chao, challenging him to tell them its true meaning (He'd told them the frog was a charm to bring luck.) He says it could possibly be a Triad symbol, but doesn't know anything about it. Scully asks him if he knows anything about an illegal market in body parts, telling him what she showed Mulder, and also that she found a substance on the bodies that is used to preserve organs during transplant. Chao says he doesn't know where to start, from which Scully says he's being obstructive. Either he resents their presence, she says, or he's protecting the Chinese community. He says they don't know what they're dealing with. He's trying to help them, but the Chinese community see him as practically a white man and refuse to give him any answers. As he storms out, he tells them he's found out who installed the new carpet in Lo's apartment.

Hsin opens his door to find Mulder, Scully and Chao on his doorstep. He slowly opens the door, revealing that he has a bandage over one eye, which he attributed to a carpet tack. He says he doesn't know of Johnny Lo. As Scully talks to him, Chao looks in on his daughter, and Mulder looks round and finds the red tile from the lottery game. After Mulder and Scully leave, Chao stays behind for a little while. When he comes out Mulder shows Chao the tile, which he says is the symbol for wood. Mulder and Scully both thing Hsin's eye injury is linked to the deaths.

After they've gone, Kim challenges her father about his eye. He says he needs the money to get her well, but she says she'll be lost if he dies. He blames himself for her illness, saying their ancestors are punishing him for leaving his homeland.

Chao comes home to find symbols in red on his door and three masked men in his apartment.

Mulder and Scully stake out Hsin's apartment, but then leave when they hear that Chao has been attacked. After they leave, a man approaches Hsin's apartment. "You know who it is," he shouts through the door. He tells Hsin he owes his latest payment. Hsin says he wants to quit, but the man says the pot is now at two million dollars and he could win it all and save his daughter if he stays in the game. "You have to keep playing," he says. "No-one quits the game" or they will be consumed by the fires of the ghosts.

Mulder and Scully get to the hospital but Chao has gone. Suspicious, Mulder looks at his chart and finds out his blood is the same type as the blood found under the carpet. He thinks the whole ghost story is just to put them off the scent.

They go to see Hsin, but find only his daughter. She lets them in and confides that she's afraid. She has leukaemia, she says, but they have no money to cure it. Mulder shows her the red tile, the one Chao says stands for wood. She says it does mean wood, but that wood corresponds to the eye, as fire does to the heart and earth to the flesh. Mulder works out that they're playing some sort of game - wagering their body parts for money.

Mulder and Scully go to the Organ Procurement Organisation, where they've discovered that Hsin went to get his bone marrow tested as a possible donor to help his daughter. While there, he also had all his other organs measured. The woman they talk to says a lot of Chinese men have been examined but have later, according to their doctor, left the area. They ask for the doctor's name.

At the lottery game, Hsin's tile comes up again. This time he draws a tile which makes him look full of horror.

Mulder and Scully track down the doctor's address, where they see Chao entering the building. They break in themselves and prowl around in the dark for a while, finding lots of eyes preserved in sterile ice.

Hsin is drugged and prepared for surgery. Meanwhile, Chao challenges the organisers of the game, saying they can't kill him as his daughter's dying. He's reminded that he's being paid to protect the game form foreigners, but he responds by knocking the vases over. "The game is over!" he cries. As the vases fall over, it's revealed that all the tiles are the same and the game is a fix.

Mulder and Scully hear the ensuing uproar and burst into the crowded room, where everyone is rioting.

Hsin, near unconsciousness, seems to see his daughter reaching out to him and begs her forgiveness. "They forgive you," says the doctor, preparing to cut into his chest. Just in time, Chao bursts in and shoots the doctor.

Scully interrogates the doctor, who says that his people live with the ghosts of the ancestors who call to them daily. Scully says it wasn't ghosts who called to those men, but himself, preying on their hopelessness and desperation. He promised them prosperity but offered only death. He says death is nothing to be feared, but hope is a "living hell." "Hope was my gift to these men," he says.

Hsin is in intensive care and his daughter is on the waiting list for a transplant, but no-one at the game will talk to the police, and Chao has disappeared "like a ghost."

Chao wakes up to find himself in a crematorium oven. As the flames take over, the Chinese symbol for "ghost" is seen on the wall.

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