Página PrincipalInternal dating: Scully performs an autopsy towards the end of the case, which she dates as March 7 1994
Kenwood, Tennessee, 1983. A horribly burnt man killed in a car accident is healed by a boy who holds his hands over the body and prays.
Same place, present day. Scully shows Mulder a video of ecstatic crowds at a tent ministry run by Rev Cal Hartley, where his adopted son Samuel heals the sick. The local sheriff has been trying to shut the ministry down without any luck, so has turned to the FBI. The charge is to be murder, as a woman died of unknown causes - not the cancer she was suffering from - after having the "healing" hands laid on.
They arrive at the tent, joining hundreds of people who are rushing to the ministry. "I think I saw some of these same people at Woodstock," Mulder says. "Mulder, you weren't at Woodstock," Scully says, sounding affectionately long-suffering. "I saw the movie," Mulder smiles.
In the tent, Rev. Hartley apologises that Samuel can't be with them. Scully thinks they should go back-stage, but Mulder wants to stay. "This is the part where they bring out Elvis," he says.
After the Ministry, Mulder and Scully ask Rev Hartley about Samuel, but he won't talk. He seems to be flanked everywhere by a black-clothed man with dark glasses. The sheriff is hostile to him, saying he's making a vast amount of money out of people's gullibility. He thinks the boy is a fake, though he still seems to think he killed the two dead people with a touch. Hartley managed to block autopsies on religious grounds, but they decide to ask for permission to exhume the bodies.
The black-coated man, Leonard Vance, leads a delegation to the site of their night-time exhumation. He says they'll do whatever it takes to stop them. Realising they can't do much, and hearing that Samuel has been spotted in town, the agents and the sheriff leave.
Samuel is in a bar, drunk, having been in a fight. The sheriff threatens to have him arrested for murder, but Mulder questions this, saying there's no evidence. The sheriff says there's no questions about he boy's guilt, even though he has no idea how he did it.
Mulder and Scully question Samuel, who says he can genuinely heal by a touch, and also thinks he must have killed with a touch too as the result of some weakness. Scully is hostile, pointing out the money he's made from his act. "Do you doubt the power of God?" he asks her. She says she doesn't, but she still doubts his claims. Samuel says he's looked into the souls of the sick and seen their pain, just as he can see Mulder's pain. "Really?" Mulder asks, clearly not believing. "What pain is that?" "The pain you have regarding a brother, or a sister," Samuel says. "It's an old pain - it's never been healed." Scully interrupts, asking if it's a trick, and trying to get Mulder to leave, but Mulder says he wants to know more. "I can see it, plain as day," Samuel says. "It was a sister. You lost her. A sister quite young. Someone took he away... strangers... a bright light." Scully calls fro the sheriff who takes Samuel away, laving Mulder, his head in his hands, asking for more. As he goes, Samuel asks Mulder to look in his heart - he might just find the truth there.
"How do you think he does it?" Scully asks. "I don't know," Mulder replies, walking away.
Samuel appears before the court. His lawyer want shim to be released on bail, but he protests, saying he must be kept in prison. The judge agrees to grant bail, but a great cloud of locusts infest the building. Samuel shouts that the Lord has testified against him.
Mulder reads from the Bible about plagues of locusts, but Scully interrupts him, saying it was just a cloud of grasshoppers - not uncommon in farm country. She asks him if this has anything to do with what Samuel said about his sister, but Mulder ignores her, talking instead about the case. He now believes Samuel is a genuine healer, but his explanation is cut short when Vance arrives and summons them to speak with Hartley.
Hartley apologises for his rude behaviour the previous day and asks for their help in proving Samuel innocent. He says Samuel has great power, but some people fear that power - people like the sheriff. The sheriff's wife has painful arthritis, but he won't let Samuel heal her. He invites them to attend a ministry.
As Hartley is talking, Mulder sees a little girl standing in the garden and rushes from the room, but when he gets outside she's gone. As Samuel watches from the window, Mulder asks a youth where the little girl went, but he says there was no-one there.
Mulder and Scully attend the next night's ministry. Back stage, Samuel says he can't go on, not after the deaths, but his father persuades him, reminding him of his great power. Hartley goes on first, introducing Vance to the crowd to testify to Samuel's power to bring people back even from beyond death. A collection is taken as he speaks. "Apparently miracles don't come cheap," Scully mutters.
Samuel comes on stage and passes among the crowd. Mulder looks up and sees the little girl again and rushes through the crowd looking for her, but can't find her. Samuel touches a girl in a wheelchair, but she suddenly goes into convulsions and dies.
Vance raises a crowd to oppose an autopsy, but Scully convinces the girl's father that an autopsy is necessary, despite what Vance and Hartley say about it being an ungodly desecration of the body. Mulder asks Scully if she thinks Samuel killed her, and she says she doesn't. "I was raised a Catholic," she says, "and have a certain familiarity with the Scripture, and God never lets the Devil steal the show." "You must have loved the Exorcist," Mulder says, smiling, and she says it's one of her favourite movies. She then asks him who he was chasing in the crowd earlier. "I thought I saw someone I knew," he says. "That boy really has you going, doesn't he?" Scully says, asking if it was his sister he thought he saw. He tells her he's seen her twice, but Scully thinks he's seeing what he wants to see - that Samuel's working on the power of suggestion alone. "I'm not delusional, Scully," Mulder protests, but Scully reminds him of what she learnt in medical school - "imagine a miracle and you're half way there."
The autopsy of the dead girl (March 7th 1994, 11.21 pm) reveals that she died of cellular hypoxia from the ingestion of arsenic or some other similar poison.
Mulder visits Samuel in prison, saying he's going to request that the sheriff release him. He assures Samuel he's innocent, telling him about the poison, but Samuel still believes the Lord is killing the people because of his own sins.
Mulder reminds Samuel that he can see his pain, and asks him what he can see now. "I've seen her," he says. "You've made her appear. Is she alive? Is that what I'm supposed to believe, or is this a trick?" "A trick of the devil?" Samuel asks, and Mulder leaves, meeting the sheriff on the way out. The sheriff opposes Samuel's release, saying Mulder is out of his depth here, but Mulder tells him the real murderer is still at large.
Two men are let into Samuel's cell and beat him to death while the guard watches. Next day, the sheriff says the boy picked a fight with some rowdies, and Hartley accuses him of hiding behind his badge - ignoring the truth. Mulder has missed all this, staring into space, and Scully says he's got "that look on his face again," as if he's lost his keys and is trying to figure out how to get in the house.
Mulder and Scully go to the courthouse. "What exactly are we trying to find?" Scully asks. "Clues," Mulder tells her, not very helpfully. They then find that the grasshoppers that swarmed into the courtroom had been lured in by a trail set on the roof.
Vance wakes up at night to see Samuel in his room, glowing with light. Samuel accuses Vance of being behind the murders. "Why?" he asks. " I gave you back your life." "You call this life?" Vance asks, holding up his scarred hands.
Mulder and Scully trace the poison found in the autopsies, and find out Vance was the one who procured it. By the time they get to him, he's dying , having drunk cyanide himself, and is babbling that Samuel was there in the room.
As Mulder stares at a picture of Samantha in his room, Scully writes her report, saying that Vance tried to ruin Samuel by destroying the Ministry's faith in him, then killed himself out of remorse. She doubts there have been any miracles in the town, but then news comes through that Samuel's body has gone from the morgue. The night nurse claims to have seen Samuel walking out by himself, only for him to vanish round a corner. The sheriff walks out, saying she's crazy, but she says other people saw him too.
The sheriff's wife, wheelchair bound, reads the report, asking her husband if the boy really was a fake. He doesn't answer, then is arrested himself and questioned about Samuel's death.
As the Ministry is packed up, Mulder and Scully prepare to leave. Echoing Scully's words from earlier, Mulder says he thinks people are looking so hard for miracles that they "see what they want to see." As he unlocks the car door, he sees Samantha's reflection in the window, but when he turns round there's no-one there.
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