Oubliette

Directed by Kim Manners

Internal dating: No date given, but presumably October or November 1995.

At 10:05 PM, the girl is asleep in the room she shares with her sister. The photographer's assistant creeps through the window and roughly covers the girl's face with his hand so she can't scream. "Nobody's going to spoil this," he mutters, and drags her out the window. Her sister is awakened, and begins to scream.

Meanwhile, at exactly the same time 20 miles across town, a woman named Lucy is serving drinks in a fast food restaurant. She is thin and troubled looking, and somewhat distracted. Suddenly a coworker turns to her and is horrified. Lucy is bleeding profusely from the nose, the front of her uniform covered in blood. Lucy falls to the floor, semiconscious, muttering over and over, "Nobody's going to spoil this."

Mulder arrives the next morning at the abducted girl's home, which is filled with police and FBI agents. He finds his way to Amy's room where her mother stands dazed at the window. Mulder is withdrawn, his heart on his sleeve, as he is with all abduction cases. He tries to reassure Amy's mother and says he knows how she is feeling. Mrs. Jacobs, tears in her eyes, replies coldly, "I'm sorry, but how could you really know how I feel?" For a person like Mulder, who knows all too well from his own experience with Samantha's abduction what it feels like, this remark cuts like a knife, and he stands stunned as she leaves the room. He notices a few spatters of blood on the carpet. He is told by Walt Eubanks, Special Agent in Charge, that the blood is from Amy, whose nose bled in her struggles during the abduction. Eubanks tells Mulder that they have a vague description of the kidnapper from Amy's sister, and some hair and fibers, but no prints. He believes the kidnapper must have been someone who knew the girl. Mulder disagrees, saying he wouldn't have been so bold if he knew the girl. He then asks about the incident of the woman in the fast food restaurant. Eubanks seems surprised that he knows about such a trivial thing, but Mulder believes that somehow they are connected.

Scully arrives later that morning at the University Medical Center in Seattle. Mulder brings her up to speed on the case and tells her about Lucy Householder, and the fact that she was saying the same thing as the kidnapper at precisely the same time but 20 miles away. He tells her that Lucy was herself an abduction victim - had been stolen from her bedroom when she was eight years old and was missing for 5 years before being found wandering on a country road. She had finally escaped the locked basement in which she had been held all those years. Her abductor was never caught.

Mulder and Scully go up to Lucy's room in an attempt to question her. She is tense, impatient, suspicious. She seems unaware of what caused her nosebleed or what she said the previous night. She tells them rudely she doesn't know anything. Mulder clearly empathizes with the woman, treating her courteously - even gently - and sympathetically.

The photographer's assistant is standing in the rain on a country road next to his car, which has a flat. A tow truck happens by and the operator offers to help him change the tire. The assistant refuses, and when the tow truck operator continues to press, he suddenly becomes angry and tries to attack the trucker with a tire iron.

That afternoon in the FBI Regional field office, Eubanks tells Mulder that Lucy has a criminal record of prostitution and narcotics offences. In view of her traumatic history, Mulder isn't surprised. Eubanks seems to think that Lucy and her current boyfriend are involved somehow in Amy's kidnapping, but Mulder totally disagrees. The SAC, desperate for any kind of a lead, thinks that it needs to be followed further, which Mulder agrees to do. Scully enters, saying that although Lucy's blood type is O+, both O+ and B+ blood was lifted from her uniform. Amy Jacobs has B+ blood. Mulder doesn't think this is proof of Lucy's involvement, pointing out that she was 20 miles across town when it happened. He tells her firmly that Lucy is, like Amy, a victim, and that's her only connection. Scully has already ordered DNA tests to determine who the bloodstains came from. Mulder asks her to keep the results quiet - he doesn't want Lucy treated like a suspect until it's sure that she is one. His partner fears Mulder has lost any objectivity in the case.

At the Bright Angel Halfway House, Lucy lies in her bed, shivering with cold. Her boyfriend is worried. Her face is scratched and she cries that it's dark and she can't see.

In a corner of a cold, dark basement, Amy Jacobs is huddled, shivering. Her face bears scratches in the same places as Lucy's. A trapdoor from above is thrown open, letting a shaft of light into the basement. The girl is terrified.

Mulder arrives at the halfway house, illuminated by the flashing lights of an ambulance. The EMT's, summoned for Lucy, are just leaving. Mulder offers to take her to dinner. They end up in the kitchen of the house with Lucy eating a bowl of soup. She is sullen, noncommunicative, clearly toughened by her tragic life. In answer to Mulder's question, she says she must have scratched herself in her sleep. She denies taking drugs, which her boyfriend confirms. Mulder then asks her if she's ever experienced temporary blindness before. In a chillingly remote tone, she answers that she's probably experienced a little of everything before, and it's all been pretty much temporary. Trying to break through to the person he knows is inside, Mulder tells her Amy is in trouble, urging Lucy to lead them to Amy, that she's the best hope the girl has. Lucy replies, "If I'm her best hope, then that little girl's in a hell of a lot more trouble than you think."

In her dark cellar, Amy sees a red light followed by the flash of a camera. In the pitch dark cellar, the sudden bright light is blinding. She tries to escape, crying out to her captor, asking who he is and why he's doing this. She begs to go home.

Back at the FBI office, Mulder is watching a videotape as Scully enters. The subject of the tape is Lucy, a week after her escape from her abductor in 1978. Her behavior is almost animalistic. Her eyes are hypersensitive to the light after 5 years in the dark, and she can barely speak. Scully says there's a break in the case - everyone received their school pictures except Amy, which seems to point to the company which took the school pictures. The photographer seems to be in the clear, but his assistant, a Carl Wade, was fired the day after the shoot. He had spent 15 years in a psychiatric hospital.

Wade is seen leaving his house. Amy hears him leave and desperately tears at the wooden slats covering the basement window.

Mulder goes to the halfway house to see if Lucy can identify Wade's picture. She becomes upset and tries to leave. Mulder gently restrains her by holding her shoulder. She recoils, saying coldly that she doesn't like to be touched. In view of the abuse she has suffered, Mulder quietly apologizes. Softened somewhat by his gentle, understanding attitude, she tries to explain the effect of all this on her. Mulder shows her Wade's photograph, and Lucy flees in terror. As Mulder chases Lucy, scenes of Amy's escape from the basement, with Wade close on her heels, are intercut. As Amy falls to the ground, injuring her elbow, sobbing and terrified, so does Lucy. In his arms, Mulder holds Lucy, who is sobbing, "What is happening to me?"

Calm now in her room, Lucy and Mulder look at Wade's picture. Mulder, using all the psychology in his training, urges Lucy to talk about her feelings. Almost stunned, she replies that it's like the whole abduction is happening to her again. He is convinced that somehow she can help Amy, but just as he is making some headway, Scully arrives at the halfway house with Eubanks and another agent. Mulder leaves Lucy, trying to stall the agents and find out why they're there. Scully tells him the blood on Lucy's uniform has been positively identified as that of Amy Jacobs, tying her directly to the case. But by the time the agents reach Lucy's room, she is gone.

Carl Wade is in the basement with Amy, telling her she shouldn't have run. The frightened girl begs for some water. Wade gets it and holds the glass, almost forcing the fluid down her throat and choking her. When she says she wants her mom, he becomes angry, shutting her once again in the dark basement.

A search has been started for Wade and for Lucy, whom Eubanks is convinced is working with Wade, since there seems to be no other rational explanation for Amy's blood to be on her uniform. Mulder theorizes that Lucy is empathizing so strongly with the abducted girl that she actually bled Amy's blood. Eubanks and Scully cannot accept this improbable theory, however. When the SAC leaves, Mulder and Scully talk. She feels he is irrationally protecting Lucy. She thinks that Lucy has developed some sort of twisted relationship with Wade, forged during his captivity of her, and is now working with him. Mulder strongly denies this, asserting that instead, there's been an "empathic transference" between Lucy and Amy. Scully stands open-mouthed:

"You are so close to this that you just don't see it... the extreme rationalization that's going on, the personal identification with the victim.... You are so sympathetic to Lucy as a victim like your sister that you can't see her as a person who's capable of committing this crime."

Mulder is hurt and angered by Scully's charge. "You think I haven't thought of that? I HAVE. And not everything I do and say and think and feel goes back to my sister. You, of all people, should realize that sometimes motivations for behavior can be more complex and mysterious than tracing them back to one single childhood experience!"

Eubanks breaks in to announce that they have a witness coming in who saw Wade.

The tow truck operator identifies Wade's picture and tells about the episode on the country road. Mulder asks which way the car was headed. From the information given by the trucker, he determines that the car was near Easton, Washington, roughly in the same area where Lucy had been found when she escaped from Wade some 17 years earlier.

As agents speed into Easton, Wade sees them and rushes back to his house. Mulder and Scully stop at a photographic shop to get Wade's address. The cars full of agents pull up to the old house in the woods, and Mulder and Scully quietly enter. The house appears deserted, the trapdoor to the basement open. Mulder goes down into the dark basement where a figure is huddled sobbing in the corner. Scully calls from above, asking if he has found Amy. Mulder leads a sobbing Lucy into the light, his arms wrapped protectively around her. He gazes up, his look pleading for Scully's understanding, for her not to leap to the conclusion that Lucy's being there is because she was working with Wade.

Eubanks questions Lucy, accusing her of being Wade's accomplice, saying if anything happened to Amy, it would be all her fault. He asks her why she was at Wade's house. She replies she doesn't know, that this is the house where Wade held her captive so long ago, but she doesn't know why she's there now. Disgusted, Eubanks tells an agent to take her out and place her in custody. Mulder, fearing for Lucy in her precarious mental state, says he'll do it. Eubanks is about to protest, but Scully takes Mulder's side, and her partner leads Lucy gently outside to the car.

Abruptly, Lucy says, "He hasn't touched her - not yet. He wants to, but he can't. It's why he takes the pictures." Encouraged, Mulder urges her on. She continues, "If he can't have her all to himself, that when he's dangerous. That's when he'll start hurting her." Mulder tries to convince Lucy that everything she's been experiencing is because she's sharing Amy's pain, and that subconsciously she's trying to help her. He tells her, "You're the survivor... you're the strong one. Now Amy needs some of your strength."

"She's not going to make it," Lucy replies dully.

"She HAS to make it - and you have to help her."

Suddenly, Lucy starts to shake. "She's cold. And wet." She begins coughing and choking and Mulder seats her in the back of one of the cars. The agents come from the house, saying Wade's car has been spotted abandoned to the north, and get into their cars and head north. Based on what Lucy has said, Mulder concludes that Wade has taken Amy to a river, which is to the east. Mulder runs through the woods to the east. Scully instructs a young agent to watch Lucy and to call Eubanks to head east, to the river. Then she rushes off after Mulder.

In the cold dusk, Carl has Amy in the river, trying to drag her across. As he hears the sirens approach, his twisted fantasies shattered, he says again, "Nobody's going to spoil this," and holds Amy under the water. Intercut are scenes of Lucy, in the back of the car, choking up large amounts of water. She collapses, eyes open and staring, and the young agent calls for an ambulance.

Mulder, closely followed by his partner, reaches the river. He sees Wade holding Amy under the water and shoots him. Then the two go into the icy river and pull Amy's limp form back up to the riverbank. They administer CPR. As Mulder's breath inflates Amy's lungs, Lucy, on the back seat of the car, draws a breath. Eventually, seeing no improvement in the young girl, Scully stops the CPR, but Mulder persists, giving chest compressions, breathing into the girl's mouth, until finally Scully physically restrains him from his frantic but vain efforts. Anguished, he pulls away from the girl and from his partner. In the back seat of the car at Wade's house, we see Lucy move and take a single breath. Simultaneously, Amy moves and starts to cough up water. Eubanks arrives and says that an ambulance is at Wade's house, working on Lucy. Without a word, fearing what has happened to the empathic Lucy, Mulder rushes back through the woods to Wade's house.

By the time he arrives at Wade's, it is dark and Lucy's body lies dead and unattended on a stretcher. He sees the water draining from her mouth, and knows that she has made the ultimate sacrifice to save Amy's life. Crouching by the side of the stretcher, he caresses the tragic woman's face, and weeps.

The next day, when Scully arrives at the Bright Angel Halfway House, Mulder is in Lucy's room, studying photographs of Lucy before her abduction, before her life literally went to hell. Scully assures him that Amy will be fine, and there's not a bruise on her. Mulder states that she was dragged through the woods for at least a mile, implying that the girl should have been covered with bruises. Scully is unable to offer a rational explanation for this. She seems chastened, humbled, perhaps a little awed. She has the autopsy results on Lucy. Almost challenging Scully to deny it, he looks up and states flatly, "She drowned, didn't she?" "They found 5 liters of water in her lungs," she admits. "She saved Amy's life," Mulder says, with a sad, proud smile.

Scully sits beside him on Lucy's bed. At last she can accept that something very unusual happened, something she wouldn't allow herself to see before. Knowing the grief Mulder is feeling and trying to comfort him, she assures him that whatever connection there was between Lucy and Amy, that he was a part of it. "Lucy may have died for Amy, but without you, they never would have found her."

"I think she died for more than Amy." He gets up from the bed and goes to the window. "I think finally it was the only way she could escape. The only way she could forget what happened 17 years ago. Finally, the only way she could outrun Wade."

He stands at the window, grieving.

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