Date Played: 04 August 2001
Game date: Monday, 11 December 2000
For Martin Osbourne, the day began with the weekly heads of division meeting. Too busy with puzzling out some of the more bizarre aspects of psychic ability, he almost missed the meeting's joke about assigning a case to Scully and Mulder. Daryl James, head of the Violent Crimes Division (and Malachi's boss), had a case forwarded to him that deals with the Kaufmann family in Hopkinsville, a backwoods town in Virginia, being terrorized nightly by creatures described as goblins.
Since the X-Files, the local police department routinely forward anything weird to the FBI.
Osbourne calls Malachi and arranges to have coffee with James so Malachi can steal the case file from James' office, duplicate it and return the original. The file contains a six page history of the attacks, an artists sketch of the creatures and a video of one of the attacks. The video shows Janice Kaufmann and her son Richard and daughter Trudy, screaming and pointing at the windows and doors while Robert Kaufmann repeatedly unloads his pump-action shotgun into these fixtures. It's obvious that the family is seeing something which does not appear on the tape. The sketch looks very much like the alien Malachi and Flex saw in Operation Bower Bird.
The document, sketch and video were sent to the FBI by Stuart Hume, a finance reporter for the Washington Post. The document states that Hume is a family friend of the Kaufmann, who asked him to record their troubles and find help. The problem is that Hume has been killed in what the local police believe is a mugging gone wrong and his funeral is tomorrow.
Osbourne, Malachi and Beaumont examine the crime scene report and view the deceased to determine what happened. Hume had been stabbed thirteen times in the chest, right shoulder and back with an iron spike at least eight inches long and triangular in cross-section. No money had been taken from his wallet. The body was found near the statue of General Pershing in Arlington National Cemetery and the Coroner places Hume's time of death at between 11.00 and 11.30pm Thursday, 7 December 2000. Metal fragments from the wounds are determined to be iron, not steel, and made about 250 years ago. Experts that Flex consults about this suggest that the wounds may be caused by a bayonet from at least the age of the American Civil War, possibly earlier.
Game date: Tuesday, 12 December 2000
After checking Hume's desk and computer at the Post, Malachi phones the funeral home to find out when Hume's funeral will be. This is, of course, the perfect time to break into Hume's house to search for clues. Flex follows him in (without Malachi knowing but that's another story) and finds a note by the phone which says "General Pershing, 11:00", confirming that this was no mugging but premeditated murder.
With no other clues to follow in Washington, D.C., the show hits the road. Next stop, Hopkinsville, Virginia. This is a small town nestled under a crescent shaped ridge in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. It boasts two diners, a truck stop, a tall water tower and a livestock transfer yard on the railway spur in the centre of town. The Kaufmann's have a hobby farm along one of the ridges behind the town.
Posing as a psychic detective agency contacted by Hume before his untimely demise, Malachi and Osbourne interview the Kaufmanns while Flex scopes out the area with night-vision goggles. Robert Kaufmann explains that a dozen of so goblins have appears at least once a week for the last two months, each time coming closer to the house than the last. Last Thursday, they tried climbing in the windows and sneaking through the doors. Kaufmann felt he had to resort to firearms and succeeded in putting large holes in his walls and ceiling. Most of the windows are boarded up because he shot the glass out of them.
Flex follows an animal trail (or is it a path?) along the ridge and discovers a large altar-like stone atop a dry stone pillar. On the top of the altar stone is a groove following the edge of the stone, surrounding a seven rayed star where the distance between any two rays is twice the distance between the previous two rays. At this point, she notices the glimmer of a camp fire down in the valley and decides to investigate.
Malachi learns from Kaufamnn that the heritage of the town is predominantly Irish and Cornish and that the locals believe that the goblins are fairies who followed the first settlers out of the Old Country. Many still leave out a saucer of best cream and barely cakes every Sunday night to appease the Little People.
Osbourne rigs up an electronic surveillance perimeter so that they'll have objective measurements when the goblins appear.
As Flex approaches the camp fire, she begins seeing other fires until she eventually realizes she is surrounded and is standing in the middle of an encampment of a large number of people. She sneaks closer to the nearest fire and observes a knot of about a dozen men in blankets wrapped over their cross- belted blue uniforms. Nearby are several piles of long barreled muskets. The talk around the fire alternates between the chances of defeating General Cornwallis and the rumors that the ground they are camping on is haunted.
Flex slowly backs away and cautiously retraces her route to the altar stone.
Malachi starts questioning Richard, who is up well past his bedtime, as Janice Kaufmann reckons that Richard has settled in to country life very well. He spends his time roaming over hill and dale with a small gang of local boys, most notably Billy Kelly, ancestor of the Kelly family who first settled the area.
Richard has a different name for the goblins. He calls them the "little brown doctors" because they operate on people to find out how people's insides work. Billy's uncle Daniel tells him all about the goblins and the what the "little brown doctors" do. Uncle Daniel also has a large number of old guns and swords and stuff. Richard, however, is giving nothing away because if he does, the goblins will hurt "everyone". While Malachi questions the boy about possible sexual abuse, Kaufmann is increasingly thinking of a new target for his shotgun.
Game date: Wednesday, 13 December 2000
Malachi phones Detective Logan, a contact in the Washington, D.C. police force who is handling the Hume murder, naming Daniel Kelly as the suspect. Logan says he can be down there with a warrant by 4.00pm that day but the judge says that the Hopkinsville sheriff must be involved in the arrest as Logan is officially out of his jurisdiction. The team sit on Sheriff Warwick Hatfield until Logan arrives with the paperwork.
The posse approach the Kelly house, a once magnificent pre-Civil War era manor house. The Kelly family once owned the entire valley but time and economics have whittled their holdings down to a single acre of fallow fields.
They find that Daniel Kelly has only recently fled. Flex, on a hunch, believes he'll be headed for the altar stone and runs for it. She finds his shoe but no trace of the man. Flex hides as others approach. She overhears Billy explaining to the local kids that Uncle Daniel has gone into the stone and until the hill to join the fairies until the heat dies down. Billy is positive Uncle Daniel will be back.
With no further leads and their only suspect fled, the team return to the Kaufmann's to say their good-byes. Robert Kaufmann has given in to the town mentality and, on the advice of Richard who know this will keep the goblins away, has decided to lay out best cream and barely cakes each Sunday night.
Unanswered Questions and Mysteries To Be Solved