- Scully isn't exactly warm to Doggett on their first X-File together in which they investigate a human bat.
- The episode opens on a dark and windy night. A tall gaunt man drives up to a house just as a thunder storm starts to blow. He gets out of the car, heads inside, and strides slowly up a staircase. As a clap of thunder blasts, a woman (Eve Brenner) sleeping suddenly wakes up and berates the tall man who is her husband George (Gary Bullock) for waking her up with his intense odour. He's an undertaker and smells of embalming fluid. His wife tells him to go back outside and take off his smelly clothes so that she can get back to sleep. Out on the porch the man has already dropped his trousers and is starting to undo his tie when he notices something nestled in the boards of his porch. He exclaims "What the hell is that?!" before it screeches and attacks him. The wife hears the noise and ventures downstairs to investigate. She can hear the sounds of chewing and slobbering before she comes across a creature in the darkness tearing up her husband's body. She screams and turns to run, but in the darkness it comes from behind and takes her down.
Credits roll.
FBI headquarters, at Agent Mulder's desk Agent Scully (Gillian Anderson) is thoughtfully perusing her former partner's belongings, she picks up his nameplate, looks at it sadly and puts it down. She looks up from her musings when she hears chatter out in the hallway; Agent Doggett (Robert Patrick) and some of his fellow agents are about to enter the X-Files office but stop short when they see Scully. She offers Doggett a brisk "good morning" which he responds to cheerfully, but tells his friends he'll catch them later when Scully gives him an annoyed look. He says rather apologetically that his friends were just curious, Scully retorts that she's "not here to be a curiousity" but to do her job. He agrees and tells her he was just getting coffee and had been there all morning going through old X-Files reports. He then asks her where his desk will be, but Scully tells him that the office still belongs to Mulder and that they will just be using it for awhile.
Doggett asks about his latest case, which Scully presents to him on a series of slides. The case involves the undertaker and his wife who were both savagedly attacked and killed by something or someone. Their wounds appear to be both inflicted by a human and an animal. Doggett professes to be flabberghasted; he's never seen anything like this before but Scully assures him it's a good place to start.
Burley, Idaho 11:18 am. Scully and Doggett pull up to the the scene of the murders, where a contigent of local officers are already set up and investigating. The man in charge is a Detective Abbott (Bradford English), who takes an immediate dislike to Scully since it seems she won't let the human predator factor drop when Abbott is certain that it has to be an animal that committed the murders; there is a single print on the porch that looks as though it belongs to an animal. It goes back and forth between Scully and Abbott both trying to argue with their facts and assumptions about whether it could be an animal or a human. Abbott thanks Scully sarcastically for "all her help" before leaving, she responds by telling him she never said exactly that it was a man.
Inside the house, Doggett comes across a second animal-like print on the stairs. He postulates that whatever attacked the undertaker and his wife could have come through the house. They go to the upstairs were Doggett finds another partial print; he theorizes that the murderer could be simply a deformed psychopath and uses Occam's Razor to support his theory. Scully tells him that Mulder used to refer to it as "Occam's Principal of Limited Imagination" to which Doggett makes a face; Scully asks him then how it's possible that a man could only leave a footprint every 25 ft.
Scully opens a closet and calls Doggett over as they both peer up into a hole in the ceiling which clearly leads to the attic. With Doggett's help Scully climbs up and looks around, noting how dark it is. Doggett meets her up there and pulls out his flashlight, asking her if she ever carries one, "never" she replies blandly. With his flashlight, Doggett comes across two regurgitated fingers and wonders how they ended up in the attic. Both agents notice claw marks made in the ceiling, like something was just "hanging there."
An old woman in her attic is looking through an old photoalbulm and weeping. Suddenly there is a high-pitched shriek and she looks up in time to see the creature above her; it falls upon her and kills her.
In an autopsy room, Scully has just gone over the wounds on the bodies of the undertaker and admits to Doggett that she is baffled and can't explain how the marks appear to be those of both a human and an animal and that enzymes excreted by the killer and left on the bodies belongs to that of a bat. Doggett then pulls out an old newspaper clipping detailing the capture of a man-bat creature forty years ago, that afterwards resulted in a series of killings not unlike the ones happening now.
Another crime scene, Doggett and Abbott are in the attic of the old woman who was murdered. Scully comes to tell them that she's found the connection between the killings of the undertaker and the old woman with the photoalbulm. Not two weeks before the burned body of a woman was found in a nearby river a call Abbott took; she was the daughter of the old woman and they hadn't been in contact for forty years. Scully believes that the body of the burned woman is the connection; both the undertaker and the old woman came into contact with it. Scully demands that the body be dug up, but Abbott becomes irrate announcing that he has real live people to worry about and not ones that are already dead. He believes that Scully is jumping to any crazy explanation she can and turns away in a huff. Doggett however, takes him aside and convinces him to do as Scully asks. When Scully vexed, demands why Doggett would side with her on digging up the body when he doesn't agree with it either, he tells her that he's noticed from the reports that an X-Files was usually solved due to a "leap" of some sort. Staring at her pointedly, he explains to her though, that in his experience leaps get people killed; whereby Scully reminds him that he was taking a leap when he brought up the newpapar clipping about the man-bat. They exchange a look, before Doggett walks away.
Somewhere else a man, his face obscured by a hankerchief and huge sunglasses puts a bat into a cage and takes it to his house. On the door of his house he has nailed a dead bat.
Cassia County Cemetary, 10:23 pm. Abbott has arrived at the cemetary to inspect the exumation of the burned body. He comes across the gravediggers and remarks at how fast they've gotten the job done. But they tell him that it was no feat since someone else already did most of the work, although their "tools" left weird scratches all over the coffin. Abbott sends the gravediggers off to deliver the body to the morgue when he hears a squeaking sound. He walks up to a tree where he notices something hairy and alive moving in it. Realizing it's something monstrous he runs to escape but the creature jumps him and chases him. Abbott tries to flee, but it is futile as he is inevitably killed by the creature and his body ends up in the morgue where Scully is waiting to autopsy it. She circles the body looking aghast as Doggett walks in. Before they can converse Doggett is pulled back outside by one of the local deputies who wants to have a word with him. Turns out the other cops are pissed-off that Abbott was killed and blame Scully for his death due to her far-out ideas. Doggett glares at them but says nothing as they walk out. Scully ignores the accusations and proceeds to tell Doggett that the burned body was purposedly burned but that the woman herself died naturally. She thinks that someone burned the body to cover something up and now that another person - Abbott - who also had contact with the body has been killed that they have to find the person who found the body in the first place. This turns out to be a Myron Stefaniuk (Dan Leegant), who just happens to be the brother of an Ernie Stefaniuk (Gene Dynarski), one of the men from forty years ago that hunted the man-bat in the newspapar clipping.
Doggett and Scully drive out to find this Myron Stefaniuk and discover him by a lake. They are relieve to find him alive and explain to him how his life is in danger due to his contact with the burned body. Myron blows them off but Doggett confronts him about his brother Ernie, and would like to know where Ernie is. Myron just tells them to leave him alone and stalks off. Scully and Doggett don't give up though, and instead stake out Myron's place watching him as he goes about his day. However after several hours have passed and nothing has happened yet, Scully starts to think that it is a waste of time. Scully confesses to Doggett that she could be wrong about the burned body since she's been trying to manufacture a theory based on a "leap" - that she's been trying too hard...... "to be Mulder" Doggett adds. Scully nods and looks thoughtful as Doggett explains to her that he might not have a fancy education like Mulder or know anything about the paranormal, but he agrees with her and doesn't think she is wrong at all. He thinks that Myron is hiding something and that him finding the burned body was too much of a coincedence.
It's night time and Myron is loading gas and food supplies into his truck just as he drives out of his garage, the creature is seen hanging from his roof. Out on the edge of the lake Myron is loading his supplies on to a barge that is connected to an island in the middle of the lake. It turns out that Myron is sending things to a man on this island, the man disguised with the hankerchief and sunglasses. Just as the disguised man is pulling the barge on to the island, Scully and Doggett in a rowboat appear out of nowhere and tell him to stop. But the man runs off into the darkness. Immediately Scully and Doggett waste no time and chase after him, Doggett correctly identifies him as Ernie Stefaniuk, whereby Scully pulls off his hankerchief to reveal that his face is scratched and scarred.
At Ernie's abode on the island, he tells the agents about spending his life in hiding from the creature which he tells them is - and no big surprise here - a man-bat like the one in the newspaper clipping. He also reveals to them that the burned body was his wife and that when she died he burned her body to try and cover up his scent and sent it back to the mainland where she could be properly buried. It turns out that it's Ernie's scent that attracts the creature to it's victims which wants to kill him out of revenge for hunting and killing the other man-bat forty years ago. Scully tells him though that his scent was still on his wife's body and now other people are dead; Ernie is shocked and terrified for his brother who he knows came into contact with the body. Scully tries to reassure him that Myron is fine, they just spoke to him earlier in the day. But Ernie tells them that the man-bat only hunts at night and that his brother is still in danger. Scully and Doggett exchange a worried glance and Doggett goes to leave and get back to Myron. Scully gets up to leave with him but he tells her to stay and protect Ernie.
Back outside, Doggett is jogging back to the rowboat, he wades into the water to get into the boat and grabs his oar when from the tall grasses behind him the man-bat attacks. It pushes him into the water and latches onto his back, biting down and ripping at the side of his neck and shoulder. Doggett manages to beat if off his back with the oar but then it attacks him from the front, snapping and forcing him down into the water. They struggle but Doggett manages to beat if off again with his oar and the man-bat decidedly flees. However Doggett passes out in the water and sinks beneath it's surface.
Scully with Ernie, keeps watch for her partner or the man-bat and talks to Ernie about how they solved the murders. Ernie tells her that they shouldn't have come here, and that their lives will be like his, living constantly in fear. Scully isn't fazed though, and tells him that the man-bat is still just flesh and blood and can be killed. Suddenly Ernie's ground radar goes off indicating that something big is coming at them through the trees. There's a bunch of thumps on the roof, and Scully pulls out her gun and unloads an entire clip into the roof. She reloads the gun and wonders if she managed to get it, she tells Ernie to get his gun as she goes about checking outside. Nothing is on the roof.
Ernie inside is scared out of his wits, his hands shake as he tries to load his rifle. He notices a movement and looks around only to be confronted face-to-face with the man-bat. It attacks him and savagedly claws and chews on his face as Scully charges in. She shoots it a couple times but it manages to fly away into the shadows of the rafters were she can't see it.
Scully is looking around for the creature, when from behind her Doggett emerges from the darkness and calls her name. Scully turns around to face him just as the man-bat rushes at them both and knocks them to the ground. Doggett doesn't waste anytime though, and with his gun already drawn fires at it from the ground as it flies away into the night.
Scully helps Doggett up as he's clearly exhausted and notices all the blood on him. He asks her if she's alright, but she says that he is not as she examines his neck wounds. Doggett then passes out again, and Scully grabs him and helps him on to the ground. As she's taking his pulse she hears the man-bat's screams fade away into the night.
Back at the bureau, Scully has returned to Mulder's desk and is fingering his nameplate. Doggett arrives with the news that Myron Stefaniuk has gone into hiding from fear of the man-bat. Scully asks Doggett is he thinks it's still out there, but he's not worried since he's certain that both of them shot it many times. Scully, a little uncomfortable, thanks Doggett for watching her back, but he tells her that it wasn't "an option." Scully nods as Doggett walks over to a file cabinet and opens it. She turns back to Mulder's desk and places his nameplate into a drawer and closes it.
The End.
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