A man armed with a gun enters a home, which has a symbol drawn in blood on the front door.Ignoring the owner, Paul Hangemuhl, and his wife, the man opens fire on a shadowy, prehistoric looking figure. The man flees the house - it�s Fox Mulder.

Dogget drives to Squamash, Pennsylvania, to investigate a sighting of Mulder. The previous spring, Mulder had questioned Marie Hangemuhl, as her sister hald told him Marie was planning to dissappear. Marie denied the claim, saying she was going to leave because of a fight with her husband, but Mulder believed she was escaping something coming to the house.

Doggett is taken to the Hangemuhls by Sherrif Frey. Dogget notes a dialysis machine in the house - Marie has been on a waiting list for two years with kidney failure. He also notices three plastered-over bullet holes in the wall.

Dogget later checks Mulder�s appartment, finding a gun under his sink - it�s missing three rounds. Lab tests find dried blood on the muzzle: perhaps Mulder killed someone at the Hangenmuhl�s, falsified the reports and fled? Skinner assures Doggett that he witnessed Mulder�s abduction.

Paul Hangemuhl and Sherriff Frey exhume a coffin. They then go to a ramshackle house, where they accuse the woman inside of lying. A creature, the same shadowy figure seen at the start of the show, bursts from the house, and is caught and caged by the sherriff�s men. Later, they release it and allow it to attack and devour Marie.

Doggett and Skinner approach Frey about a death certificate from the previous spring - Frey says it was a transient, but they are suspicious. Going to the graveyard, they find the open grave, with a small tunnel leading from it. The symbol from the Hangemuhls' front door is drawn out in stones nearby - the Lone Gunmen later tell the agents that it is a Native American shamanic symbol, which summons a �soul eater� to consume illnesses.

Elswhere, in a cellar, the creaure regurgitates a strange substance which assumes human form. Remembering that Marie was sick, Doggett visits the rustic woman in the ramshackle house. Hearing a weird noise, he investigates the cellar, to find a regurgitaed human figure - it�s Marie, and she is alive.

Having taken Marie to hospital, Dogget finds out that her kidneys are cured. The rustic woman explains that the creature, a soul eater, is suffering from years of eating other�s illnesses. Doggett realises that Mulder must have sought the creature to cure his brain disorder, but had tried to put the creature out of its misery when he saw how much it was suffering. The locals buried the creature, but it didn�t die, so the rustic woman sheltered it.

Doggett takes the creature away in his car, but the Sherriff and the townspeople shoot him as he tries to leave, and the creature escapes in the dark. Doggett�s body is buried, but the creature digs it up and eats him. Awakening in a cellar covered in slime, Doggett realises that the creature has sacrificed its own life to bring his back.

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