West Philadelphia (born and raised, on a playground where I spent most of my days) 5:15 am. A HUD official named Joseph Cutler is overseeing the harsh hosing of homeless people camped out along the street, citing notices on the walls that warned them this would happen. The plan is to relocate them to an abandoned hospital on the other side of town. He goes back to the HUD office, warning the homeless piled up outside that they are next. A trash truck comes up the street, and the homeless people on the street scurry into their tents and shelters. The truck stops and seems to off-load a human being.
Cutler is in his office when the lights flicker off. He is choked by a hideous smell, and sees a shadowy figure behind the door. Cutler grabs his gun but doesn’t have time to use it: Trashman blows open the door and rips Cutler’s arms and head off in one, seamless move. He takes the arms with him as he returns to the back of the garbage truck.
Mulder and Scully are called in to work the case, though Detective Dross is careful to point out that he just wants their help; he is not turning it over to them. There are no footprints to pull – there are foot “smudges” but no ridges indicating footprints or shoes. Dross thinks the arms and head were removed by a sword, but Scully’s initial observation shows the muscles were torn apart, not sliced. Cutler’s head was left in the garbage can. Mulder notices a creepy bit of street art on a billboard outside the window that looks like a cross between Slender Man and a zombie.
While Scully is examining the body, she gets a phone call. At first, she thinks the caller ID reads just William, but a second look reveals it says William Scully, Jr., her older brother. She ignores the call but he calls back, so she answers. Bill is calling to let her know that their mother, Margaret, suffered from a heart attack. She is in the ICU of a DC hospital. Mulder insists she go to her, and Scully doesn’t argue.
Mulder remains and looks over the security footage. All of the cameras are knocked away, so they captured nothing, but before the camera on Cutler moved, it shows his eyeline is high. Mulder also notices that the billboard outside Cutler’s office does not have the street art on it. Whoever painted it had to have done it after the murder. As Mulder leaves the office, he slips on something – a dirty band-aid. He peels it off and keeps it as evidence.
Outside, Mulder requests roof access to the billboard building from a local cop. While he waits, he overhears an argument between two city officials: Daryl Landry and Nancy Huff. Landry is eager to get the homeless into the abandoned hospital so they can have a safe place with a roof over their heads – and he can start construction on an apartment building that will gentrify the area. Huff wants them to stay because it is inhuman to move the homeless like cattle – and the hospital is two blocks away from her district’s high school. Mulder recognizes the selfishness behind what they are saying, and asks who speaks for the homeless. A homeless man speaks up: “the band-aid nose man.” He leaves before Mulder can get anything further out of him. When he looks up, he sees that someone has stolen the street art.
The street art was stolen by a couple of young men who make it their business to sell stolen street art. While one goes to look something up on the computer, the other rolls the massive artwork into the corner. He looks back and sees the canvas is blank, so he moves closer to check it out. When his buddy comes looking for him, he sees his friend slumped behind the blank panel, suffocated in a garbage bag. Trashman tears him apart like Cutler and drags their bodies out of the warehouse.
Mulder takes the band-aid to the lab, and is shocked to find nothing is there. It looks dirty, but the scientist found nothing: no organic material; no inorganic material. Nothing alive; nothing dead. Nothing.
Meanwhile, Scully goes to see her mother in the ICU. The nurse tells her that before she arrived, Margaret woke for a minute, asking for Charlie. This surprises Scully, that her mother would only ask for her youngest son, who has been estranged from the family for years. Scully sits with her mom, talking to her, begging her not to “go home yet” to Ahab and Melissa. “I need you.” She flashes back to her own coma, with Mulder at her side, then notices an envelope with Margaret’s personal effects. One item gets her attention: a quarter hanging from a chain. Bill calls for an update, which Scully won’t give him; just that he should get here as soon as possible. (Bill is in the Navy, stationed in Germany.) She assures him that Margaret’s living will states that she wants to be kept alive on life support, a decision she came to after Scully’s coma.
Unfortunately, the nurse informs Scully that last year, Margaret changed her advanced directive. Margaret does not want to be resuscitated, which means the doctor has to extubate her. Before Scully can argue, she gets a call. At first glance, she thinks the caller ID just says William, but it is actually Mulder. “I am here,” he says, and waves to her from just outside the ward. Scully looks relieved.
Mulder tries to distract her with what he has learned about the case so far. The street people believes that the art, signed by someone named Trashman, protects them. No one has ever seen him, and they don’t know his real name. Mulder suspects they are dealing with a mission-oriented killer who is taking out those who are involved in the relocation of the homeless. He would stay with Scully, but suspects the killer will strike again. Scully has not been listening to a word. Instead, she is distraught that her mom asked for Charlie; that she changed her living will; that she can’t figure out the significance of this quarter. The doctors start to remove Margaret’s breathing tube, and Mulder puts his arms around Scully. “I don’t care about the big questions,” she sobs, “I just want to ask her about the little ones.”
The agents sit beside Margaret, who is now breathing on her own, but still comatose. Scully wonders why they never found a way to wish someone back to life. “I invented it, back when you were in the hospital like this,” Mulder tells her. “You are a dark wizard,” she replies, to which Mulder chuckles. Scully get a call and is surprised to find Charlie on the other line. She begs him to talk to Margaret, say anything, just “bring her back to us.” She puts him on speaker phone and he says hello, generic pleasantries. Mulder reports that Margaret’s pulse quickened but he didn’t see her move. Then, she opens her eyes. She looks to Mulder, takes his hand, and says, “My son is named William, too.” Then she flatlines. Scully kisses her mother goodbye.
The orderlies come to take Margaret away, which sends Scully into a tailspin, yelling at them to leave her alone. Mulder holds her tight, reminding her that her mother is an organ donor. She sobs openly into his chest. “Her last words to us were about our child, her grandchild, the one we gave away. Why did she have to say that?” Suddenly, Scully needs to work. RIGHT NOW. Mulder tries to calm her, but she stomps out of the office.
While Scully and Mulder were saying goodbye to Margaret, the Trashman was taking his next victim: Nancy Huff. Her husband is out of town, so she has a cup of yogurt before locking up. She notices gooey green puddles on the floor, swimming with maggots, spaced like tiny footprints. The Trashman is at the top of the stairs and he comes at her, fast. Huff fights him off, but you really can’t outrun a supernatural beast. He puts her head in the trash compactor and takes her body back out the garbage truck.
Forensics has examined the paint used in the street art, and only one store in town carries it. The agents follow a young man with a load of paint back to a warehouse. Scully disarms the kid easily and Mulder asks to see the Trashman. He takes them to the stairs, warns them that the power is out, and runs. Mulder doesn’t “do” stairs. “Back in the day, I did stairs, and in three-inch heels,” Scully retorts. Mulder pulls out his flashlight – as does Scully – and points out to her that “back in the day is now.”
In the basement, they see a couple of ghostly white figures, moving through the halls. They come to a door, where a voice on the other side says he is in danger but wants them to go away. The agents don’t listen, and bust open the door. A tattooed man is hiding in the corner and begs them to put down their guns (“it doesn’t work on them”) and shut off the lights (“they don’t see me, I don’t see them, they can’t hurt me”). This is the Trashman, the artist. He rambles on, the gist of which is that homeless people are treated like trash, and he was trying to give them a voice through art, not violence. His art is put around town to “look after” the homeless. He admits that those “things in the hall” he made, but didn’t mean to. They will go away eventually, but not the band-aid nose man, a full-sized clay version of the Trashman that has been killing city officials around town. Apparently the band-aid was initially put there to hold the clay in place, and when the figure came to life, the band-aid remained. The artist Trashman calls this a Tulpa, a Buddhist “thought form.” Mulder schools him a bit in Buddhist thought forms, including that they aren’t real. The artist ponders this for a moment, then insists he willed it.
The artist continues his rambling: “I didn’t bring him here, he came to me, but in the end he told me what he wanted to be.” He believes that there are spirits and souls floating around, and if we think real hard, they come to life. The artist just wanted to scare those that were harming the homeless, but a violent idea popped into his head, and now the Trashman thinks that is what he is supposed to do. During all of this, Scully can’t help but think about William, complete with archival footage of herself giving birth, introducing William to Mulder, and the teary admission that she gave him away. Clearly, she is wondering if her son isn’t a “thought form.” Finally, Scully speaks, telling the artist that if it was his idea, then he is responsible. “You made the problem. You put it out of sight so it wouldn’t be your problem, but you are responsible. You are just as bad as the people you hate.” Scully is berating herself as much as she is the artist. Mulder realizes that if the artist’s theory is correct, then the Trashman has one more victim in mind: Landry.
Landry is completing the transfer of homeless people into the hospital, which frankly, doesn’t seem too bad. But Landry himself is being an ass, blowing off the homeless who are asking questions, looking for their belongings, sending them to their rooms. He hears something in an off-limits area and goes to investigate. The smell hits him first, followed by the buzz of flies. All over the hospital, the homeless people seal themselves off in their rooms. Landry continues after the noise, and follows the green gooey footsteps. A shadow looms, and the Trashman appears behind him. Mulder and Scully arrive, and follow Landry’s screams. By the time they get there, Landry is nothing but a pile of severed body parts. There was only one way in or out of that room; Scully can’t understand how they didn’t see him. Mulder sees a band-aid on the ground. He understands.
The artist packs up a few meager belongings and leaves his warehouse. The “band-aid nose man’s” face has been replaced with a giant happy face emoji, which is somehow far creepier. The Trashman returns to being a painting on the side of a building.
Scully and Mulder sit side by side on a log at the waterfront; Margaret’s ashes in an urn at her daughter’s feet. Scully now knows why her mother asked for Charlie: she wanted to make sure he would be okay. “She birthed him, made him, he is her responsibility.” She concludes that is why Margaret’s last words to them were about William: that they would be responsible for William, even though they can’t see him. “I know as parents we made a difficult sacrifice to keep him safe, but it was for his own good.” She calls him “Fox,” which is meant as a sign of intimacy, but it kind of makes me queasy. “I believe you will find all of the answers to the biggest mysteries, and I will be there when you do,” Scully says. “But my mysteries will never be answered.” She concludes by saying, “I need to know we didn’t trade him like trash.” There is nothing Mulder can say, so he puts his arm around her and holds her.
They are so getting back together.
You can watch a preview of the next episode, titled “Babylon,” using the player below.
