xf_book_club | Story 195: "Every Sparrow Falling" by Alloway

What a nice response we got to "Oak Leaves in October." It's good to remember that there is more to this fandom than just the canon ship.

"Every Sparrow Falling" is a case file that is also an x-file. This is Mulder and Scully doing what they do best, investigating the paranormal. It's been some time since I last read this, but I remember being scared out of my wits. There is no summary from the author so here's the one from Raiders of the Lost Fanfic, Maybe Amanda's old rec site: "Casefile, paranormal, religion, madness. And hot dogs, peanuts, and Cracker Jack."

For Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, it began with a sparrow.

More precisely, with a flock of sparrows. Or, as Agent Mulder had put it, a *fall* of sparrows.

"Clever turns of phrase aside, I imagine this must have been quite painful," Scully murmured, hunkered down by the body. The dead man was sprawled out peacefully, save for the bloodied mats of hair and the bird feet dangling out of his skull. Scully surmised she'd find the rest of the bird buried within. "Looks like it fell beak first, but still...given the impact, the rate of speed had to have been tremendous."

"Indicating a long fall from a high point of origin," Mulder agreed. "Consistent with the recent evidence of lights in the clouds, odd humming noises--"

"Mulder--" she protested.

"Come on, Scully, this isn't the first unexplainable 'deadly rain' recorded," he argued. "You've seen the reports. Hell, you've *written* the reports."

She nodded. "Frogs, rocks, crickets, seas of blood, and the inexorable sacrifice of the first-born..." she trailed off. Mulder was first; Samantha had been second-child. "No, Mulder," she said. "This rain is man-made. Or at least sent by aliens with terrible penmanship."

"What?"

Latex-sheathed fingers plucked one of the birds from its chosen spot of ground. "It's been stuffed," she said. "Hardened with a shellac-like coating. And Mulder--the writing is a dead giveaway." She rotated the bird to face him. Ignoring the blind, dead eyes, he focused his attention on the scrap of fabric sewn to the sparrow's chest.

"Wife beating," Mulder read. Scully could almost hear the gears grind as Mulder shifted from alien-chaser to manhunter. "Scully, pass the gloves."

Read "Every Sparrow Falling", then come tell us what you think.

The link is to IOHO's archive, but if their bandwidth runs out, you can also read it on her old site via the Wayback Machine or at Gossamer.