Teso dos Bichos

Internal dating: No dates given between "Syzygy", ending on January 12th 1996, and "Avatar", starting on March 7th, but there are 7 episodes between then to fit into two months. This one should presumably be February 1996.

That night, the tribe chant round a fire, drinking some ritual drug or other. Bilac partakes of the ritual, grimacing as he drinks the potion. His vision warps and goes all drunken looking. The camera, using the same warped visions, seems to run fast towards Roosenvelt's tent and leap on his. Seen through the side of his tent, the silhouette of a large cat attacks him.

Three weeks later, in a Boston museum, a security guard finds a pool of blood and flees in horror. A researcher is missing, and the police are called in, and with them come Mulder and Scully. Dr Lewton, the head researcher, tells them he thinks the missing researcher was killed because of the project he was working on - the Amaru urn they "rescued". The Secona Indians want it back, he says, and are prepared to kill for it. Mulder asks about the curse, that says that anyone disturbing an Amaru will be devoured by the jaguar spirit, but Lewton dismisses it as a myth.

Mona Wustner, a graduate student, shows them the urn and says it should have stayed buried. They ask about Dr Bilac, who's written to the state department petitioning that the urn be returned, and she says he's resigned, or else been thrown out by Lewton, over this issue.

Mulder and Scully visit Bilac at his home. He says he lived with six months with the Secona, and makes no secret of having opposed the urn coming to Boston. He says he thinks more people will disappear until the urn is returned, and Scully asks him if that's a threat. "Your investigation is a waste of time," he tells them. Scully thinks he's prime suspect, but Mulder needless to say thinks there's more to it. She asks him if he thinks Roosenvelt and the missing researcher were killed by a jaguar spirit. "Go with it, Scully," Mulder says.

On the phone, Mona asks Bilac why he lied to the FBI and offers to come over. Lewton comes in and she guiltily puts the phone down. He assures her that it's only right to keep the urn here. To say anything else is to put politics before preserving the past for posterity.

Unable to start his car (a jaguar), Lewton finds blood in the engine. Something watches from the undergrowth, creeping up on him and attacking him rather dramatically with much screaming.

At the crime scene the next day, Scully finds a rat in the car engine. She questions Mona, who says he saw nothing suspicious last night. Meanwhile Mulder searches the woods, as something with drunken looking visions watches him from up a tree. As he crouches under a tree, blood drips onto his face from a... thing up in the tree.

Mona visits Bilac, clearly concerned about him. He's living in the dark, sweating and ill. She says that, ever since he's come back, he's been acting like a stranger. "You wouldn't understand," he mutters. She catches sight of a bowl of yellow liquid, which he says is yaje (pronounced yah-hey - the vine of the soul. She's horrified that he's drinking this, and he orders her out.

The thing in the tree turns out to be Lewton's small intestine, fun for Scully to chop up. She identifies him by the lunch he ate, and the fact that he was eating sunflower seeds all afternoon. "A man of taste," Mulder mutters. She can't determine how the intestine was extracted, though says there are bite marks as of a small animal inflicted after death.

Mona calls Scully, saying Bilac's sick and that she's scared of him. Now she thinks someone is watching her. Scully says she'll send Mulder over to get her.

As Mona works on t he urn, the dog starts barking. She goes to investigate and finds all the toilet lids rattling. Gingerly, she opens one and hundreds of rats push their ways out. She screams.

Scully goes to Bilac's house. There's no trace of him, but she finds the yaje.

Mulder teams up with a security guard and together they creep round in the dark, looking for Mona. Scully calls him, reading aloud from Bilac's journal, in which he raves about having seen the Amaru in the form of a jaguar. She dismisses the whole thing as a drug-induced hallucination. Mulder ends the call, seeing a trail of blood. He follows it into the toilets (and still doesn't put the lights on) and finds blood everywhere, Bilac sitting looking dazed in the midst of it. "She's dead," he says.

Scully questions Bilac, accusing him of killing Mona, although they have no body. He says he came here to protect her from the Amaru, but she says there' no curse - "you are the curse," she tells him. He says this thing is more powerful than any man, and denies knowing where Mona's body is.

Mulder studies the water on the toilet floors, and from there finds dead rats in the toilets. Meanwhile the night watchman finds Mona's dog, Sugar, dead. The vet finds the dog ate a cat who'd eaten a rat who'd eaten some rat poison (and, yes, even Mulder and Scully realise how silly they sound at this point). Mulder goes on about transmigration of souls into animals forms - a theory Scully rather fairly sums up as being about a "possessed rat? The return of Ben?" She asks him if he's high on yaje too. "Go with it, Scully," he says, once again.

Bilac disappears, even though there was a guard on the only door. Mulder finds a small entrance to the old steam heating tunnels, and they climb down the only entrance large enough to fit through. "Ladies first," Mulder mutters, but Scully shakes her head.

Mulder and Scully prowl around the passages as the drunken visions thing growls and watches them. "Follow that rat?" Mulder says, and they follow that rat into a room full of bodies - Lewton and the others. The drunken eyes watches them again, but it's only a kitty cat, cute and ginger. And it gets worse - even more terrifying. There are hundreds of menacing cute cats, and one even jumps on Scully's face, and... (Oh dear, I'm trying, honest. I'm trying to be objective about this, but this bit is just funny.) Anyway, Mulder heroically saves her from the kitty cat and they both try to flee, pursued by whatever the collective noun is for killer kitty cats. But don't worry - they get out. Phew. I was scared there for a moment.

The urn is sent back and buried again in the place from which it was dug up, and the deaths ruled to be animal attacks. In his closing notes, Mulder muses about the great forces beyond the world we know, and that "some things are better left buried."

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